The Supreme Court Deals Major Blow to Congressional Authority

Mother Jones; Jim Watson/AFP/Getty

In a single opinion, the Supreme Court on Tuesday took a swipe at congressional authority while at the same time stripping some victims of religious violations the ability to sue over illegal treatment. The decision weakens a law guaranteeing freedom of religious expression in federally funded prisons. But with time, the ruling may prove far more disastrous and far-reaching, unleashing illegal behavior that both Congress and the victims are powerless to prevent.

The decision achieves this dual result by limiting Congress’ authority to require that terms in its funding laws can be enforced through private suits against the individuals who violate them—making it harder for Congress to give these laws teeth and for victims to seek damages. The Constitution “may confer on Congress the power to spend money for the general welfare,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in his majority opinion, but “it does not ‘endow Congress with [any] power to regulate conduct.’”

This attack on Congress and the victims of unlawful behavior stems from a violation of one man’s religious rights while in a federally-funded prison. A former inmate with the Louisiana Department of Corrections, Damon Landor is a devout Rastafarian who follows the religious command not to cut his hair. When he was transferred to a new facility, Landor worried that the intake guards might shave his head, so he brought along a paper copy of a court case explaining his right to keep his hair long. The prison guards threw it in the trash, held him down, and shaved his head. Congress had passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act to protect inmates against such abuses, and in that law, gave inmates like Landor the right to sue the individual guards who violated his rights. So in this case, Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections, Lander sought damages under RLUIPA from the guards who shaved him.

Critically for this case, Congress enacted RLUIPA in 2000 under its broad constitutional authority to spend money for the “general welfare,” or what is known as its spending clause authority. In today’s 6–3 decision along partisan and ideological lines, the court’s Republican appointees threw out Landor’s suit and, more broadly, limited Congress’ authority under the spending clause. In time, Landor and RLUIPA may prove to be vehicles through which the court’s conservative wing limits congressional authority—while leaving victims of illegal behavior, like Landor, unable to seek damages.

Spending clause legislation is a common exercise of congressional authority. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent points out, Congress has used the clause to protect people in federally funded nursing homes and people receiving emergency care at federally funded hospitals. It powers the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s ban on discrimination in federal assistance, combats pollution under the Clean Air Act, and protects Medicare and Medicaid patients’ rights.

Yet the crux of the majority’s decision in Landor is to demote spending clause legislation to, essentially, a mere contract between the federal government and the party that receives the funds. Even though the Constitution says no such thing, the Roberts court declares that spending clause legislation can only be enforced against violators who consent to be held liable, in the same way a contract is only valid of both parties consent. Under the court’s new holding, if, as in this case, prison guards violate RLUIPA, Congress’ only enforcement mechanism is to withdraw the prison’s funding. It’s a cramped vision of congressional authority that could ultimately allow states and individuals to overrule Congress’ ability to govern.

The Democratic appointees found the notion ridiculous. The spending clause gives Congress the “power to legislate, not merely to negotiate,” read Jackson’s dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. “The Court reduces some of Congress’s greatest legislative achievements—federal laws that secure civil rights, environmental stability, healthcare, and more—to nothing more than the wheelings-and-dealings of an especially wealthy private party.”

This case is in line with the Roberts court’s broader project to grow the powers of the president and Supreme Court while limiting Congress’ authority. Often, this happens through decisions that take powers once exercised by Congress and hand them to the president or the courts. But in this case, the court went directly after Congress’ power to pass laws.

It’s possible that Congress can get around this swipe by adding language to spending laws requiring, in the case of RLUIPA, that guards at federally funded prisons explicitly consent to personal liability under the law—providing that ingredient necessary to a contractual obligation. The majority decision acknowledges such a workaround could allow Congress to once again authorize private suits. But as the court pursues its limited view of legislative authority, such promises are unlikely to broadly preserve Congress’ spending clause powers.

One reason to be suspicious is that the majority’s decision invokes paeans to federalism and states rights—principles that the court has turned to in the past to gut civil rights laws. If Landor prevailed in his argument that the guards are liable under RLUIPA, Gorsuch writes, it “would be inconsistent with principles of state sovereignty and a federal government of limited and enumerated regulatory powers.” Perhaps, consent alone, achieved by Congress tweaking the language of spending clause legislation, will be enough to satisfy the majority’s objections to Landor’s suit and others like it.

But Landor‘s limits on legislators and citizens are no outlier. Just one year ago, the court, in another Gorsuch opinion, limited individuals’ ability to protect certain rights as Medicaid recipients through private suits. And on the same day as Landor, the same six-justice majority broadly interpreted one law in order to green light certain suits by oil companies, while shutting the courthouse doors to victims of human rights abuses under another law, the alien tort statute.

“So tally today,” University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman posted after the court released its opinions, “victims of human rights violations & beneficiaries of public benefits programs can’t sue. oil companies can.”