Landor v. Louisiana Dept of Corrections and Public Safety · ¶120

Strange as it seems, today’s majority appears to mean it. One indication is the majority’s concession that “Congress could have lawfully imposed personal liability on the individual defendants” if it had tweaked RLUIPA to better conform to the Court’s understanding of the limits of contract law. Ante, at 10. “For example,” the majority allows, “Congress could have said that, as a condition of federal funding to LDOC, its officers had to agree to enter separate contracts with the federal government consenting to answer suits under RLUIPA.” Ibid. “Or,” the majority posits, “Congress might have conditioned its funds on Louisiana’s agreement to exercise its own regulatory powers to adopt a state law cause of action enforceable against LDOC officers who violate RLUIPA.” Ibid. Those arrangements, the majority assures us, would have sufficed for Spending Clause purposes. But the one Congress…

slip opinion, revised 6/28/26
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