regarding being able to take advantage of his religious diet he's a muslim and being able to have the proper foods in order for him to maintain his faith and practice his faith while using prison this is gone through  judgment and both of these issues have been not negated based upon what the court called community qualified immunity and of to begin with if i may i'd like to  hority well i know they said they indicated that they're speaking to your embassy or speaking to the your government regarding the conditions that are going on in prison and the things that need to be inquiry from his consulate as result of his mail he this this is mail was treated as confidential after the embassy are you saying that there's a prison policy that's written there that we can locate in this record that says that they my colleague's hesitancy about saying it is clearly established law in a circuit such that damages would be available against a prison guard for failing to abide by judgments opinion i'm not going to argue that the damage but to make that argument you're going to you can make your arguments attorney client or legal male as well you know what is what is secure and what is not what they have to open their presents and what is not what's confidential and what is not because they were both put on the same level in the carlson decision so yeah i would ask you to do that but you know i'm not i understand the defense argument but even if that's the case who's to say that the periodical needs are not going to would override attorney client privilege or the privilege of the embassy for confidential mail remember we were not asking that they not open the mail but only that those legal mail that mail be opened in the presence of the it's a different issue and qualified immunity though yes it is ok well we i think we have your human hand you've got about a half a minute left why don't we hear from the other side and then we'll give you a chance to respond ok thank you mia please the court my name is jeffrey steele i'm with the office of the attorney general and i appear on behalf of respondents and in this matter the ruling of the district court should be upheld food that violated the tenets of this faith they did not prohibit him from eating food that was acceptable to his faith and they were no they were under no obligation to give him a choice of entrees with respect to the confidential correspondence issue again prison officials did night did not violate any constitutional right of  appellant they did not prohibit communication with the consulate they did not treat appellant any differently from any other inmate and there is no constitutional right to correspond prison he did not exhaust his claims in the context of the prison to which he had been transferred he did not amend his complaint to include any of those people and the resolution of this case on summary judgment would established law which takes care of the qualified it was takes care of the damage issue because if not clearly there was law even if it is the law nonetheless no damages are awarded because of qualified immunity right you course want more than that you want us to say clearly established or otherwise it simply is not law or should not be i thought on judge no one is just a court opinion not for that can i get a case fairly persuasive  he doesn't say anything other than if it is mail between the inmate and his embassy or consulate that it has to be opened in his presence as this are open as you know could open it to see if there's contraband in it but once they determine that it's just a piece of paper they have to give it time and they can't read it and the rationale the judge newman gives is that a prisoner communicating with his embassy or consulate may very be in fact may very likely be communicating about some legal matter connected to his incarceration why is judge newman wrong on that well first of all of course my job here today is to represent my the fact is that there simply is no constitutional right to confidential correspondence no case correspondence with the embassy or consulate i don't know that there's any should be able to correspond confidentially with with his own counsel but i want it was a case can be made i think that's the law there is there is no authority with respect his conclusion that correspondence with a foreign embassy should be and in the may in fact be corresponding about legal matters with the foreign embassies so it is also true that he may correspond with any number of other individuals or entities legal matters that doesn't necessarily make the correspondence confidential there are governmental entities within this country with whom correspondence may not be deemed confidential the mere fact that it is a governmental entity doesn't make the matter confidential you know but we do recognize and i know i'm struggling with the question and i don't think it's necessarily an easy question but for example we have the vienna convention that requires prompt communication with the embassy or consulate when a citizen of a foreign country is arrested and i have a favor i'm afraid we honor that mostly in the breach by not notifying promptly and it causes all kinds of problems when we don't do that but there clearly is some difference between notifying one's embassy or consulate when a foreign national has been incarcerated or is now imprisoned after a conviction than with just anybody or just well be but it also may well not be and i don't know how one determines whether that is the nature of the correspondence taking place without actually reading it well what i mean  of this country or even whether he is threatening government officials that is a concern that has been cited in the case law as one of the security concerns  that make it necessary to monitor mail to foreign consulates moments what is their policy rule regulation in the prison system because a friend of balances we have the balance of safety requirements of the prison with the benefits and all that stuff what is what is the official policy here with regard to embassy mail what's the official policy with communicating with your mother your girlfriend your fiver what's the policy relative to opening communications forget classes of correspondence what kinds of correspondence the prison will treat as confidential frankly i i do not recall which regulations deal your best guidance and you have to go there and wherever else leaders that's the best guidance you can give us at this time yes and so what would thirty one forty one do for the office argument i'm sorry what the thirty one thirty one forty one do helping us with this argument thirty one forty one sets forth those classes of correspondence that the prison has deemed confidential and thus those classes of correspondence in which they have balanced the security concerns and the privacy concerns of the inmate and made a determination that the security concerns  e sufficiently i want to say minimal but they are they are not sufficiently immediate or serious that the mail may need be read now and the embassy communication falls within thirty one forty one embassy communications are not within those classes of correspondence that the prison has deemed to be confidential is suggested that it should be there is not in the other side so what i'm asking is there any authority to the other side there is constitutional there are cases that we have  in our brief that detail the need to open mail to foreign embassies because of security concerns i could look at our brief for these citations i don't have them at my fingertips islamic religion they require to have their meats treated the certain way similar to that of those of the jewish faith and it's an accommodation to help them with that what the prison has done is simply trying them all in the vegetarian they don't have any need at all and that's not an accommodation that's a that's a restriction and they're not vegetarians and particularly in light of the cooper compromise that took place last year for those of the jewish faith they're able now t