The Supreme Court on November 5, 2025 in Washington, DC. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The Supreme Court appeared unconvinced Monday that a devout Rastafarian whose dreadlocks were forcibly cut in prison five years ago should be able to sue correction officials for damages.

Damon Landor had a few weeks left in his sentence for drug possession when guards at a Louisiana prison handcuffed him to a chair and shaved off the knee-length dreadlocks he had grown over nearly two decades. Minutes earlier, Landor had handed them a judicial opinion requiring prisons to allow dreadlocks for religious purposes.

On the one hand, the case appeared tailor-made for a conservative Supreme Court that has consistently sided with religious interests in recent years. But over the course of nearly two hours

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