It is often said that bad facts make bad law. Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections is an exception to this rule. Prison guards in Louisiana cut the hair of a Rastafarian prisoner in violation of his religious beliefs. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Landor could not sue the guards in federal court for monetary damages. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion got the Constitution right in two important respects. First, Landor affirmed a judicially enforceable limit to Congress’s Spending power. Second, Landor affirmed judicially enforceable limits to the Necessary and Proper Clause. This decision, which may be the “sleeper” case of the term, should come to be viewed as a landmark separation of powers decision on par with Lopez, Morrison, Printz, and NFIB.
Part I of this essay describes Landor’s claim under the spending power. The Court held that Spending Clause conditions bind only those who consent to them. Part II turns to Landor’s fallback argument based on the Necessary and Proper Clause. Here, the Court distinguished between executing an enumerated power and serving the goals of a statute enacted under it. Parts III and IV trace that distinction through the leading Commerce Clause cases: Lopez and Morrison, which confined the Substantial Effects doctrine to economic activity, and Raich, in which Justice Scalia’s concurrence tied that doctrine and its exceptions to the Necessary and Proper Clause. Part V shows how Landor adopts Justice Scalia’s framing of the inquiry and holds the proposed remedy “improper” as well. Part VI explains where the Landor dissent goes astray. We conclude with Landor‘s place in the decades-long effort to restore the Constitution’s limits on federal power.