Opinion ID: 217797
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Be an attempt to incite violence based on race,

Text: religion, sex, creed, or nationality. b. Advocate, facilitate, or otherwise present a risk of lawlessness, violence, anarchy, or rebellion against government authority. c. Be an attempt to incite disobedience toward law enforcement officials or prison staff. .... g. Contain information relating to security threat group activity or use of codes and/or symbols associated with security threat groups. h. Contain materials specifically found to be detrimental to prisoner rehabilitation because it could encourage deviate criminal sexual behaviors. The religious literature the Warden rejected contained messages of white supremacy and racial purity, such as “[t]he Bible is the genesis of, the history of, and the prophecy for, the WHITE RACE only” and “[t]he Jews . . . are the mongrelized descendants of Satan through Cain. . . .” Hayes claimed that once he discovered that the requested mail had been rejected, he asked fellow inmate Lloyd Harper to order the same literature. Harper did so and received the literature without intervention by the Warden. Harper attested to his membership in the Christian Identity Faith, as well as his receipt of the same and similar religious materials on several occasions before and after the prison rejected Hayes’s mail. Hayes filed several inmate grievances and appealed the Warden’s decision to reject his mail. On June 7, 2005, TDOC Assistant Commissioner of Operations, Roland Colson, denied Hayes’s appeal based on the determination that “the contents of this mail contain[ed] text denigrating various 3 races of people and promoting supremacist ideologies” in violation of TDOC Policy 507.02, which “could possibly jeopardize the safe, secure, and orderly operation of the institution.” Hayes filed suit pro se, alleging deprivation of his First Amendment rights to free speech, and free exercise of religion, or equal protection, in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and violation of the RLUIPA. Hayes originally sought monetary and injunctive relief but later withdrew his request for damages and pursued only injunctive relief. Hayes does not pursue the free speech and equal protection claims on appeal. See infra n.2. The district court denied Defendants’ initial motion for summary judgment without prejudice pending further discovery. The court granted Defendants’ renewed motion, finding TDOC Policy 507.02 constitutional both on its face and as applied to Hayes and that Defendants’ rejection of Hayes’s mail did not violate the RLUIPA. The court also found Hayes’s claims regarding Defendants’ failure to change his religious designation in the TDOC computer system to be moot because the change was ultimately made. Hayes does not challenge that ruling on appeal.