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Nature of Suit Code: 530
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Habeas Corpus
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued December 9, 2013 Decided August 1, 2014

No. 13-5218

SAEED MOHAMMED SALEH HATIM, DETAINEE, CAMP DELTA,

ET AL.,

APPELLEES

v.

BARACK OBAMA, ET AL.,

APPELLANTS

Consolidated with 13-5220, 13-5221

Appeals from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:12-mc-00398)

(No. 1:05-cv-01429-UNA)

(No. 1:06-cv-01766-RCL)

(No. 1:07-cv-02338-RCL)

Edward Himmelfarb, Attorney, U.S. Department of 

Justice, argued the cause for appellants. With him on the 

briefs were Stuart F. Delery, Assistant Attorney General, and 

Matthew M. Collette, Attorney. Ronald J. Whittle, II, 

Attorney, entered an appearance. 

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S. William Livingston argued the cause for appellees. 

With him on the brief were Brian E. Foster, David H. Remes, 

Brent Nelson Rushforth, and David Muraskin. Alan A. 

Pemberton entered an appearance.

Before: GARLAND, Chief Judge, and HENDERSON and 

GRIFFITH, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH.

GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: Guantanamo Bay detainees 

challenge two new policies they claim place an undue burden 

on their ability to meet with their lawyers. The district court 

upheld the detainees’ challenge, but we reverse, concluding 

that the new policies are reasonable security precautions.

I

The first challenged policy concerns where the detainees 

may meet with their lawyers. In the past, detainees at 

Guantanamo Bay would meet with visitors in nearby Camp 

Echo, to which they were driven in vans, or occasionally in 

Camps 5 and 6, the camps where most detainees are housed. 

Meetings in the housing camps would take place in small 

interview rooms with a guard posted outside the door. It is 

easier to monitor detainees’ meetings with visitors in Camp 

Echo. There is no need to post a guard outside each meeting 

because the interview rooms are equipped with videomonitoring equipment, and visitors can summon a guard at 

the touch of a button. The Camp Echo rooms are also larger 

than those in the housing camps and include restroom 

facilities and space for prayer, which means that guards need 

not move detainees to other rooms mid-meeting to use the 

bathroom or worship, as they must in the housing camps.

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Citing the ability to provide more security with fewer guards 

at Camp Echo, in September 2012 the government 

implemented a new policy that required that all detainee 

meetings with visitors take place there instead of in the 

housing camps.

The second challenged policy involves the search the 

detainees must undergo when meeting with their lawyers. It 

has long been Guantanamo policy that detainees are searched 

both before and after any meeting with a visitor. Standard 

protocol in military prisons calls for a non-invasive search of 

the genital area of a prisoner. In the past, searches at 

Guantanamo departed from that element of the protocol in an 

effort to accommodate the religious sensibilities of the 

detainees. Under the old policy, guards would grasp a 

detainee’s waistband and shake his pants in an attempt to 

dislodge any items that might be hidden, careful to avoid 

contact with a detainee’s genital area. Concerns arose that not 

searching the genital area was posing a security threat. Those 

concerns escalated with the suicide of a detainee who took an 

overdose of medication that he had smuggled into his cell and

the discovery of shanks, a wrench, and other weapons in the 

housing camps that had evaded the searches.

In May 2013 the government revised the search 

procedures for Guantanamo to conform to standard military 

prison procedure. According to the protocol, the guard places 

his hand as a “wedge between the scrotum and thigh, and 

us[es] the flat hand to press against the groin to detect 

anything foreign attached to the body. A flat hand is used to 

ensure no contraband is hidden between the buttocks.” The 

guard also passes a hand-held metal detector a few inches 

over the detainee’s body, including the area of his groin and 

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buttocks. At no time is the detainee’s groin visually exposed 

to the guard. 

Detainees challenged these two new policies in habeas 

corpus proceedings in district court, arguing that they have the 

purpose and effect of discouraging meetings with their 

counsel. The detainees claimed that their poor health made it 

difficult to make the trip by van to meet with their lawyers in 

Camp Echo and that their religious beliefs made it impossible 

to meet with counsel at all if genital searches were required to 

do so. The detainees sought an order permitting them to meet 

with counsel within the housing camps and without being 

subject to the new search procedures.

The district court granted the detainees’ motion in part. 

The district court found that the new procedures were an 

exaggerated response to overstated security concerns, 

concluding that the rationales offered by the government were

but a pretext for the real purpose, which was to restrict 

detainees’ access to counsel. The court entered an order 

barring use of the new search procedures when meeting with 

counsel. It also ordered that ill and injured detainees be 

allowed to meet with their lawyers in the housing camps

instead of in Camp Echo. See In re Guantanamo Bay 

Detainee Litig., 953 F. Supp. 2d 40, 59-61 (D.D.C. 2013). 

The government appealed, and we stayed the district court’s 

order pending resolution of this appeal.

II

There is no doubt that we have jurisdiction over an appeal 

from a district court order granting injunctive relief, 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1292(a)(1); see also Salazar ex rel. Salazar v. District of 

Columbia, 671 F.3d 1258, 1261-62 (D.C. Cir. 2012), but there 

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is a question in this case whether the district court had 

jurisdiction to issue that order in the first place. Congress has 

granted district courts jurisdiction to hear habeas claims. 28 

U.S.C. § 2241(a); see also Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466, 481 

(2004) (holding that § 2241 extends to Guantanamo 

detainees). But in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 

(MCA), Congress barred the federal courts from hearing the 

habeas claims of Guantanamo detainees. 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2241(e)(1). The MCA also stripped the federal courts of 

jurisdiction over “any other action . . . relating to any aspect 

of [their] detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of 

confinement.” Id. § 2241(e)(2). 

In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court invalidated 

subsection (e)(1)’s ban on habeas claims of Guantanamo 

detainees, 553 U.S. 723, 792 (2008), but (e)(2) remains a bar 

to any “other action” by detainees, see Al-Zahrani v. 

Rodriguez, 669 F.3d 315, 319 (D.C. Cir. 2012). Thus, the 

district court has jurisdiction under § 2241(a) to hear the 

detainees’ habeas challenges, but is prohibited by (e)(2) from 

hearing any of their other claims. The government contends 

that the detainees’ claims in this matter do not sound in 

habeas and are therefore barred by (e)(2) because they relate 

to their “treatment” and “conditions of confinement.” The 

district court found jurisdiction, holding that the alleged 

interference with access to counsel infringed the right to 

habeas relief announced in Boumediene. See In re 

Guantanamo Bay Detainee Litig., 953 F. Supp. 2d at 49-50.

We need not determine whether the district court’s view 

of the scope of habeas is correct, for this challenge falls 

squarely within the jurisdiction we recognized recently in 

Aamer v. Obama, 742 F.3d 1023 (D.C. Cir. 2014). In Aamer,

we held that challenges to conditions of confinement can 

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properly “be raised in a federal habeas petition under section 

2241,” and when so raised are not barred by (e)(2)’s 

prohibition on non-habeas actions. Id. at 1030, 1038. The 

government has expressly conceded that the procedures 

challenged by these habeas petitions are “conditions of 

confinement.” Br. of Appellant at 17-19. The district court 

thus had jurisdiction under Aamer, and we need not address 

other jurisdictional theories.

III

We review constitutional challenges to prison policies 

under the test announced by the Supreme Court in Turner v. 

Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89 (1987). This deferential standard 

applies to military detainees as well as prisoners. See 

Florence v. Bd. of Chosen Freeholders of Cnty. of Burlington, 

132 S. Ct. 1510, 1518 (2012) (applying the Turner test in the 

context of pre-trial detention); United States v. White, 2014 

WL 354661 (N-M Ct. Crim. App. Jan. 31, 2014) (applying 

the Turner test to challenges to policies in a military prison); 

United States v. Phillips, 38 M.J. 641, 642-43 (A.C.M.R. 

1993) aff’d, 42 M.J. 346 (C.A.A.F. 1995) (same); see also 

Amatel v. Reno, 156 F.3d 192, 196 (D.C. Cir. 1998)

(observing that in the military context, the “government is 

permitted to balance constitutional rights against institutional 

efficiency” in a manner similar to the Turner test).

In Turner, the Supreme Court explained that although 

incarcerated individuals do not completely lose their 

constitutional rights, “problems of prison administration” 

allow the government to restrict those rights in ways that 

would be unacceptable for persons not incarcerated. To 

prevent judicial overreaching into matters of prison 

administration, courts are to uphold prison regulations that 

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“impinge on inmates’ constitutional rights” as long as those 

regulations are “reasonably related to legitimate penological 

interests,” id. at 84-85, 89—a stark departure from the 

“inflexible strict scrutiny” analysis that normally applies 

when the government infringes on constitutional rights, id. at 

89.

Here, however, the district court took the view that 

Turner’s deference to reasonable prison regulations does not 

apply to habeas claims, holding that “[s]ince the right to seek 

habeas relief is not limited or withdrawn in the prison context, 

neither may the Executive or the Legislature circumscribe the 

petitioners’ right.” In re Guantanamo Bay Detainee Litig., 

953 F. Supp. 2d at 53. Although there is some intuitive appeal 

to this novel reasoning, we are compelled to reject it because 

it directly contravenes Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343 (1996).

Lewis involved a class action alleging that inadequacies in the 

Arizona prison system deprived inmates of their constitutional 

right to access the courts by limiting the prisoners’ ability to 

bring various types of lawsuits, including habeas petitions. 

See id. at 346, 354-55. The Supreme Court held that 

“Turner’s principle of deference” applies to prison officials’ 

interference with inmates’ attempts to bring their habeas 

claims, id. at 350, 361, foreclosing the district court’s 

suggestion that Turner does not govern a prisoner’s claim that 

his habeas rights have been abridged by prison officials. See 

also Phillips v. Bureau of Prisons, 591 F.2d 966, 974 (D.C. 

Cir. 1979) (applying a Turner-like test to prison regulations 

limiting access to paralegals); cf. Toolasprashad v. Bureau of 

Prisons, 286 F.3d 576, 584-85 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (applying 

Turner to allow limitations on prisoners’ ability to file 

grievances against prison administrators). We therefore 

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proceed to consider the detainees’ claims under the Turner

framework.1

IV

We assume, without deciding, that the district court was 

correct in concluding that the detainees’ right to habeas 

includes the right to representation by counsel and that that 

right has been burdened by the policies that the detainees 

challenge. 2 See Overton v. Bazzetta, 539 U.S. 126, 131-32 

(2003) (declining to define the asserted right where, even if 

such a right existed and was violated, the regulations survived 

Turner). Turner requires that we look to four factors to

determine if these new policies are reasonable: (1) whether 

there is a “valid, rational connection between the prison 

regulation and the legitimate governmental interest put 

 1 Although the district court held that a test less deferential 

than Turner applies to regulations affecting habeas claims, it 

declined to specify the features of that test because it found that the 

challenged policies failed even under Turner. 

2 Although the detainees claim that the new policies cut off 

their ability to meet with counsel, we note that the Guantanamo 

administrators have not done so directly. They have only required 

searches before meetings with any visitors, including counsel. In 

the face of those searches, which the detainees find objectionable 

on religious grounds, the detainees have made the decision that they 

will not meet with counsel. See O’Lone v. Estate of Shabazz, 482 

U.S. 342, 351-52 (1987) (“While we in no way minimize the 

central importance of [religious beliefs] to respondents, we are 

unwilling to hold that prison officials are required by the 

Constitution to sacrifice legitimate penological objectives to that 

end.”).

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forward to justify it,” Turner, 482 U.S. at 89 (internal 

quotation marks omitted); (2) “whether there are alternative 

means of exercising the right that remain open to prison 

inmates,” id. at 90; (3) “the impact accommodation of the 

asserted constitutional right will have on guards and other 

inmates, and on the allocation of prison resources generally,”

id.; and (4) “the absence of ready alternatives” to the 

regulation, id. Although we examine each factor, the first is 

the most important. Amatel, 156 F.3d at 196 (“[T]he first 

factor looms especially large. Its rationality inquiry tends to 

encompass the remaining factors . . . .”); see also Beard v. 

Banks, 548 U.S. 521, 532 (2006) (plurality opinion). 

Prison security, the government’s asserted purpose for the 

challenged policies, is beyond cavil a legitimate governmental 

interest. See Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 546-47 (1979). 

Turner teaches that, and common sense shouts it out. The 

only question for us is whether the new policies are rationally 

related to security. We have no trouble concluding that they 

are, in no small part because that is the government’s view of 

the matter. “The task of determining whether a policy is 

reasonably related to legitimate security interests is peculiarly 

within the province and professional expertise of corrections 

officials.” Florence, 132 S. Ct. at 1517 (internal quotation 

marks omitted). We must accord “[p]rison administrators . . . 

wide-ranging deference in the adoption and execution of 

policies and practices that in their judgment are needed to 

preserve internal order and discipline and to maintain 

institutional security.” Bell, 441 U.S. at 547 (emphasis 

added); see Florence, 132 S. Ct. at 1517; cf. Phillips, 591 

F.2d at 972.

The touchstone of our deference, of course, is whether the 

government’s assertion of a connection between prison 

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security and the challenged policy is reasonable. Here, 

Guantanamo officials explained that they adopted the new 

search policies to address the risk to security posed by 

hoarded medication and smuggled weapons. It stands to 

reason that enhancing the thoroughness of searches at 

Guantanamo in the way called for by standard Army prison 

protocol would enhance the effectiveness of the searches. See 

Florence, 132 S. Ct. at 1516-17. The detainees make no claim 

to the contrary. Instead, they argue that more thorough 

searches are not needed during their visits with counsel 

because the government failed to provide evidence that the 

contraband was smuggled into the housing camps during 

these visits. But the authorities at Guantanamo do not know 

how or when detainees obtain contraband. Cf. Shaw v. 

Murphy, 532 U.S. 223, 231 (2001) (“Prisoners have used 

legal correspondence as a means for passing contraband.”); 

Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 577 (1974) (“The 

possibility that contraband will be enclosed in letters, even 

those from apparent attorneys, surely warrants prison 

officials’ opening the letters.”). In light of such uncertainty 

and the fact that smuggling takes place, we think 

administering a more thorough search in connection with 

attorney visits as well as with any other detainee movements

or meetings is a reasonable response to a serious threat to 

security at Guantanamo.

Likewise, it is reasonable to require that all meetings 

between detainees and their visitors, including counsel, take 

place in Camp Echo, which requires fewer guards than the 

housing camps. Each meeting room in Camp Echo, unlike 

those in the detainees’ housing camps, has a restroom and a 

space for prayer, which means that guards are not needed to 

transfer detainees mid-meeting. And the video monitoring in 

Camp Echo eliminates the need to post guards outside each 

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meeting room, as is necessary in Camps 5 and 6. Guards who 

would have to stand sentry if the visits took place in a housing 

camp are instead available for postings elsewhere at 

Guantanamo, enhancing the facility’s overall security. 

The district court failed to defer to the government’s 

justifications for the new policies, concluding that they were 

not rationally related to a legitimate government interest. The 

court required proof from the military that the old procedures 

were ineffective and in need of change and that the detainee 

who committed suicide had managed to repeatedly evade the 

search by hiding the hoarded medication in his groin area.

The district court also dismissed the military’s expert 

judgment that some of the guards needed for monitoring visits 

with detainees in their housing camps could be better used for 

other security needs, substituting its own assessment that 

“allowing attorney-client meetings [in the housing camps] 

would divert a maximum of two to three guards in Camp 5 

and four to six guards in Camp 6. The Court is confident the 

[military] can spare these guards . . . .” In re Guantanamo Bay 

Detainee Litig., 953 F. Supp. 2d at 61. 

This misapprehends something fundamental about 

challenges to prison administration: “The burden . . . is not on 

the State to prove the validity of prison regulations but on the 

prisoner to disprove it.” Overton, 539 U.S. at 132; see also 

O’Lone v. Estate of Shabazz, 482 U.S. 342, 350 (1987) (“By 

placing the burden on prison officials to disprove the 

availability of alternatives, the approach articulated by the 

Court of Appeals fails to reflect the respect and deference that 

the United States Constitution allows for the judgment of 

prison administrators.”). The district court required no such 

showing of the detainees and erred by failing to defer to the 

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reasonable explanation of Guantanamo officials for decisions 

within their area of authority and expertise. 

Turner next requires that we consider whether the new 

policies leave the detainees with some other means to exercise 

their right to counsel. Detainees who forgo visits with their 

lawyers to avoid the searches can still communicate with 

counsel via letter. Supreme Court precedent teaches that 

alternative means of exercising the claimed right “need not be 

ideal, however; they need only be available.” See Overton, 

539 U.S. at 135. But we need not decide whether letters are an 

adequate replacement for meetings in person, because even if 

we were to agree with the detainees that they are not, the lack 

of an alternative “is not conclusive of the reasonableness of 

the [regulation]” because the other factors must still be 

considered, Beard, 548 U.S. at 532 (plurality opinion) 

(internal quotation marks omitted).

Both of the remaining factors cover much of the same 

ground as the first and reinforce our conclusion that these 

policies are reasonable. See Amatel, 156 F.3d at 196. As to the 

third factor, the impact of an accommodation, we have 

already concluded that the new search procedures promote the 

safety of the guards and inmates by more effectively 

preventing the hoarding of medication and the smuggling of 

dangerous contraband, and thus the accommodation the 

detainees seek would necessarily have a negative impact “on 

guards and other inmates.” See Turner, 482 U.S. at 90; Beard, 

548 U.S. at 532 (plurality opinion). Allowing counsel 

meetings with detainees to take place in the housing camps

instead of Camp Echo would burden “the allocation of prison 

resources.” See Turner, 482 U.S. at 90. 

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Finally, the detainees have pointed to no “ready 

alternative[]” to the new policies. Id. To be “ready,” a policy 

must be an “obvious regulatory alternative that fully 

accommodates the asserted right while not imposing more 

than a de minimis cost to the valid penological goal.” Overton, 

539 U.S. at 136. The detainees’ suggested alternative of 

reverting to the old policies does not meet this “high 

standard.” Id. Having already determined that we defer to the 

military’s judgment that the old policies hinder the 

government’s interest in security, we can hardly say that they 

are nonetheless “ready alternatives.” In the considered and 

experienced judgment of Guantanamo administrators, the old 

policies contributed to the troubling lapses in security. We 

will not second-guess that determination. See id.; see also 

Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401, 419 (1989) (“[W]hen 

prison officials are able to demonstrate that they have rejected 

a less restrictive alternative because of reasonably founded 

fears that it will lead to greater harm, they succeed in 

demonstrating that the alternative they in fact selected was not 

an ‘exaggerated response’ under Turner.”). 

The district court’s very different take on these reasonable 

changes to policy at Guantanamo appears to stem from its 

view that the changes in policy were pretextual and the result 

of the government’s plan to inhibit detainees’ access to 

counsel. It is unclear what role, if any, motive plays in the 

Turner inquiry. Compare Hammer v. Ashcroft, 570 F.3d 798, 

803 (7th Cir. 2009) (en banc), with Salahuddin v. Goord, 467 

F.3d 263, 276-77 (2d Cir. 2006), and Quinn v. Nix, 983 F.2d 

115, 118 (8th Cir. 1993). Even if some quantum of evidence 

of an unlawful motive can invalidate a policy that would 

otherwise survive the Turner test, the evidence of unlawful 

motive in this case is too insubstantial to do so. The district 

court drew inferences from past conduct by former 

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commanders and dismissed as unbelievable the sworn 

statements of military officials. We find such an approach 

unwarranted. Although we must not give prison 

administrators a free hand to disregard fundamental rights, 

this case is a far cry from instances where administrators have 

acknowledged their intent to extinguish prisoner rights and 

acted accordingly. Cf. Hammer, 570 F.3d at 802-03. The 

tenuous evidence of an improper motive to obstruct access to 

counsel in this case cannot overcome the legitimate, rational 

connection between the security needs of Guantanamo Bay 

and thorough searches of detainees. 

V

For the foregoing reasons, the decision of the district court 

is reversed. 

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