In Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety, No. 23–1197 (June 23, 2026), the U.S. Supreme Court cited Restatement of the Law Second, Contracts § 175(1) and Restatement of the Law Second, Agency § 328 in holding that legislation enacted by Congress under the Spending Clause could bind only those who voluntarily and knowingly undertook obligations by agreement with the federal government, while distinguishing the prisoner’s reliance on Restatement of the Law Second, Agency §§ 140 and 385(1).
In that case, intake officers with the Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety (LDOC) forcibly shaved the head of a Rastafarian prisoner, causing him to violate his religious beliefs. The prisoner brought an action seeking money damages under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) against the LDOC as well as some of its individual officers in their personal capacities. Under RLUIPA, enacted by Congress pursuant to the Spending Clause, LDOC had to fulfill various conditions to qualify for federal funds distributed to state prison systems, including refraining from imposing “substantial burden[s] on the religious exercise[s]” of state prisoners outside exceptional circumstances. The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana granted the officers’ motion to dismiss. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed, finding that RLUIPA did not permit suits against officers in their individual capacities.
Writing for the majority, Justice Gorsuch held that the prisoner did not have a federal RLUIPA cause of action against the individual officers, because Spending Clause statutes could bind only those who voluntarily and knowingly undertook obligations by agreement with the federal government, and the individual officers in this case never voluntarily and knowingly consented to answer suits under RLUIPSA. The Court reasoned that, “[u]nder the Spending Clause, Congress lack[ed] regulatory authority to impose liability on [the individual officers] directly” and had to depend instead on consent. To “sort out whether consent exist[ed],” the Court turned to contract principles set forth in Restatement of the Law Second, Contracts § 175(1), under which coerced assent to a contract was invalid. As the prisoner did not allege that any of the individual officers “entered any agreement with the federal government, let alone that any of them [had] voluntarily and knowingly consented to answer private suits under RLUIPA,” the Court concluded that the prisoner’s case could not proceed against them “any more than a breach of contract action might proceed against a defendant who never formed a contract.”
The prisoner argued that the “individual defendants in this case [could] be held personally liable under RLUIPA,” citing Restatement of the Law Second, Agency §§ 140 and 385(1) in asserting that the individual defendants had a “duty to obey all reasonable directions” from their principal, which in this case was the LDOC, and that their actions could bind their principal to a contract when they acted “within the scope of [their] authority.” In rejecting the prisoner’s argument, the Court cited Restatement of the Law Second, Agency § 328 to point out that, when a principal entered a contract with a third party, which in this case was the federal government, the principal’s agents did not become liable to the third party for their principal’s non-performance. Thus, while the LDOC “might [have been] subject to certain private suits under RLUIPA for breaching its promises to the federal government,” under normal principles of agency and contract law, that did not mean LDOC’s employees were liable as well.
Read the full opinion here.