*

 On June 28, 2005, this court granted the appellees’ motion for an order of

noninvolvement due to lack of service of process in the district court. After an

examination of the appellant’s brief and the record, we have concluded that oral

argument is unnecessary. Thus, the appeal is submitted on the appellant’s brief and

the record. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted August 31, 2005*

Decided September 26, 2005

Before

Hon. RICHARD D. CUDAHY, Circuit Judge

 Hon. DANIEL A. MANION, Circuit Judge

 Hon. DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge

No. 04-4012

JASON WILLIAMS,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

DONALD N. SNYDER, JR., 

Director, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States

District Court for the Southern

District of Illinois

No. 02-C-1177

G. Patrick Murphy, 

Chief Judge.

O R D E R

Illinois inmate Jason Williams brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming

that officers of the Illinois Department of Corrections (“IDOC”) violated his rights

under the First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. The district court concluded

that the allegations were frivolous and dismissed the suit under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A. 

Williams then filed a motion to alter or amend the judgment under Fed. R. Civ. P.

UNPUBLISHED ORDER

Not to be cited per Circuit Rule 53
No. 04-4012 Page 2

59(e). The district court denied the motion, and Williams appeals. We affirm in

part and reverse and remand in part.

Williams is a Rastafarian and wears his hair in dreadlocks in observance of a

tenet of his faith that forbids him to cut or comb his hair. See Reed v. Faulkner,

842 F.2d 960, 962 (7th Cir. 1988) (summarizing principal doctrines of

Rastafarianism). According to Williams, he first experienced conflict with prison

authorities over his hairstyle after he was “harassed” by two correctional officers

who called him “pinhead” and “jungle bunny.” Williams filed grievances against the

officers, demanding that they be made to respect his “person” and his “religion.” 

Shortly afterwards, he was informed that if he did not “remove” his dreadlocks, he

would be placed in disciplinary segregation. He claims that a report was then

“falsified” against him, and he was sent to segregation where, we understand, he

remains.

Thereafter, prison officials demanded that Williams “remove” his dreadlocks

or request a haircut as a condition of leaving his cell. At first, he was not allowed to

go to the showers at all; later, correctional officers permitted him to go, but wrote up

a disciplinary report each time he did so without complying with the hairstyle

policy. Williams then stopped showering because the reports were costing him

good-time credits. He was also “denied” yard exercise and passes to visit the

medical center for non-emergency ailments; he was not permitted to appear in

person before the Adjustment Committee that handled his frequent disciplinary

reports; and he was prevented from making phone calls to his lawyer regarding

unidentified “post-conviction” proceedings. 

Williams’s complaint alleged retaliation and violation of a number of his

constitutional rights, including his First Amendment rights to free exercise of

religion and access to courts, his Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and

unusual punishment, and his Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process and

equal protection. The complaint named as defendants not only those directly

responsible for the rights violations but also higher-level IDOC administrators. 

Williams asserted that he submitted numerous grievances and letters documenting

his mistreatment—many of which were submitted as exhibits to the complaint—but

the administrators did nothing despite their awareness that his rights were being

violated. In addition, he claimed that a number of officials refused to answer

grievances in order to prevent him from exhausting his administrative remedies so

that he could bring suit.

The district court dismissed all of the claims as frivolous. As relevant here, it

explained that “contrary to his assertions,” Williams had not been required to cut

his hair but “was also given the option of taking down his hair for a security

inspection.” The court concluded that such a requirement involved a de minimis

imposition on Williams’s free exercise of his religion and that his interests were “far
No. 04-4012 Page 3

outweighed” by the prison’s legitimate penological interests in safety and security. 

The court did not specifically respond to the claim of retaliation, but found that

there was no violation of Williams’s due process rights in connection with his

placement in segregation because he had no liberty interest in remaining in the

general population. In addition, the court rejected Williams’s claims against the

higher-level IDOC administrators because the theory of respondeat superior was

not available under § 1983 and, furthermore, Williams’s allegations amounted “at

best, [to] a claim of negligence.”

On appeal, Williams first renews his argument that he stated a claim for

retaliation by alleging that he was placed in segregation because he filed grievances

against the two correctional officers who called him names. A plaintiff must plead

three elements in order to state a claim for retaliation: he must “specif[y] a

retaliatory action”; he must name the appropriate defendants; and he must “assert[]

a constitutionally protected activity, the exercise of which caused the . . . retaliatory

action.” Hoskins v. Lenear, 395 F.3d 372, 375 (7th Cir. 2005). Williams met this

standard: he identified the filing of false reports and his placement in segregation

as the retaliatory action; he specified the relevant defendants; and he invoked his

constitutional right to use the prison grievance procedures. See id.; Lekas v. Briley,

405 F.3d 602, 614 (7th Cir. 2005) (“prisoner can sufficiently state a claim for relief

when he alleges that prison officials issued baseless disciplinary tickets against

him in retaliation for pursuit of administrative grievances”). The district court may

have believed this claim precluded on the theory that retaliation is a violation of

due process and therefore subject to the requirement that a plaintiff identify a

liberty interest in order to state a claim. See Hoskins, 395 F.3d at 375. But as we

explained in Hoskins, the basis for a retaliation claim need not independently

violate the Constitution, id., so Williams need not demonstrate an interest in

remaining out of segregation. 

Williams’s next significant argument is that the prison’s policy regarding

dreadlocks violated his right to freedom of religion. “[W]hen a prison regulation

impinges on inmates’ constitutional rights, the regulation is valid if it is reasonably

related to legitimate penological interests.” Turner v. Safley, 107 S.Ct. 2254, 2261

(1987). “This is not a demanding standard.” Reed v. Faulkner, 842 F.2d 960, 962

(7th Cir. 1988). As we explained in Reed, if “the regulation limiting the length of

male inmates’ hair strikes a reasonable balance between the interest in religious

liberty and the needs of prison safety and security, he must lose on his free exercise

claim.” Id. at 962.

The district court erred in evaluating Williams’s free exercise claims because

it effectively applied a summary judgment standard. The court purported to

balance the interests of Williams and the prison, and found the former “far

outweighed” by the latter. But such a balancing process is not appropriate based on

the pleadings alone, without the benefit of additional factfinding or a summary
No. 04-4012 Page 4

judgment record. Similarly, the court’s finding that the hairstyle policy involved a

de minimis imposition resolves factual questions, which are not appropriately

decided at the pleading stage. See Mack, 80 F.3d at 1180. Such questions here

include “whether the practices in question are important,” see id., and whether it is

even feasible for Williams to comply with the policy without cutting his hair. 

Williams’s third significant argument on appeal is that his complaint alleges

sufficient personal involvement on the part of the IDOC administrators. An official

will satisfy the personal-involvement requirement of § 1983 if he deliberately

disregards the plaintiff’s constitutional rights. See Fillmore v. Page, 358 F.3d 496,

506 (7th Cir. 2004). And we have specifically held that “‘[A] prison official’s

knowledge of prison conditions learned from an inmate’s communication can . . .

require the officer to exercise his authority and to take the needed action to

investigate, and if necessary, to rectify the offending condition.’” Reed v. McBride,

178 F.3d 849, 854 (7th Cir. 1999) (quoting Vance v. Peters, 97 F.3d 987, 993 (7th

Cir. 1996). The district court suggests that this claim “constitutes, at best, a claim

of negligence,” but here Williams stated an actionable claim by alleging that he

informed the administrators of the violations of his rights, and that they failed to

take appropriate action.

The remainder of Williams’s substantive legal theories—i.e., equal

protection, due process, access to courts, and cruel and unusual

punishment—warrant little discussion. Because they all involve the same set of

facts implicated in his retaliation and free exercise allegations, they would be

redundant even if we found that he stated a claim. See Conyers v. Abitz, 2005 WL

1713392, at *5 (7th Cir. July 25, 2005) (dismissing equal protection and Eighth

Amendment claims based on same circumstances as free exercise claim because

free exercise claim “gains nothing by attracting additional constitutional labels”). 

We must analyze Williams’s allegations under the most “explicit source[s] of

constitutional protection,” Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 395 (1989); Conyers,

2005 WL 1713392, at *5, and in this case, the salient claims are retaliation and

freedom of religion. 

For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the district court’s denial of

Williams’s claims concerning equal protection, access to courts, due process, and the 

Eighth Amendment, and REVERSE and REMAND the rulings on his retaliation

and Free Exercise/RLUIPA claims. We express no opinion on the ultimate merits of

the case; we hold simply that Williams’s complaint is adequate to avoid dismissal at

the preliminary screening stage.