Opinion ID: 763587
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Prison Setting

Text: 35 First Amendment rights, like many other rights, are circumscribed in the prison setting. In Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89, 107 S.Ct. 2254, 96 L.Ed.2d 64 (1987), for example, the Supreme Court held that a prison regulation [that] impinges on inmates' constitutional rights ... is valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests. Similarly, Pell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. 817, 822, 94 S.Ct. 2800, 41 L.Ed.2d 495 (1974), holds that a prison inmate retains those First Amendment rights that are not inconsistent with his status as a prisoner or with the legitimate penological objectives of the corrections system. Thus, review of such regulations offers a considerable degree of deference to the prison authorities, while still retaining ultimate judicial authority to evaluate the constitutional reasonableness of the regulation. See Turner, 482 U.S. at 89-91, 107 S.Ct. 2254 (rejecting strict scrutiny and applying a four-factor reasonableness test to prison regulations). The role of the judiciary requires weighing the interests of the prison as an institution (in such matters as security and effective operation) with the constitutional rights retained by the inmates. 36 Just what are the First Amendment rights retained by prisoners? Plaintiffs here allege a First Amendment retaliation claim. Specifically, they each claim to have been punished for exercising their constitutionally protected right to access the courts, partially grounded in the First Amendment's protection of the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. U.S. CONST. amend. I. It is well established that prisoners have a constitutional right of access to the courts. See, e.g., Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 116 S.Ct. 2174, 135 L.Ed.2d 606 (1996); Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 821-24, 97 S.Ct. 1491, 52 L.Ed.2d 72 (1977) (listing case law supporting the right); Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 577-80, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974) (extending Johnson, infra, to cover prisoner assistance in civil rights actions); Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S. 483, 488-90, 89 S.Ct. 747, 21 L.Ed.2d 718 (1969) (striking down prison prohibition against inmates aiding one another with applications for habeas corpus); Ex parte Hull, 312 U.S. 546, 549, 61 S.Ct. 640, 85 L.Ed. 1034 (1941) (striking a prison regulation that essentially screened all prisoner habeas applications); Berryman v. Rieger, 150 F.3d 561, 567 (6th Cir.1998) (It has long been recognized that the lawful resort to the courts is part of the First Amendment right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.); John L. v. Adams, 969 F.2d 228, 231-32 (6th Cir.1992) (listing sources for the right, including the First Amendment). 37 This is not a generalized right to litigate but a carefully-bounded right, as Justice Scalia makes clear in Lewis v. Casey: 38 Bounds does not guarantee inmates the wherewithal to transform themselves into litigating engines capable of filing everything from shareholder derivative actions to slip-and-fall claims. The tools it requires to be provided are those that the inmates need in order to attack their sentences, directly or collaterally, and in order to challenge the conditions of their confinement. Impairment of any other litigating capacity is simply one of the incidental (and perfectly constitutional) consequences of conviction and incarceration. 39 Lewis, 518 U.S. at 355, 116 S.Ct. 2174. Thus, a prisoner's right to access the courts extends to direct appeals, habeas corpus applications, and civil rights claims only. The importance of this right to incarcerated individuals is evident and can hardly be overstated: 40 The right to file for legal redress in the courts is as valuable to a prisoner as to any other citizen. Indeed, for the prisoner it is more valuable. Inasmuch as one convicted of a serious crime and imprisoned usually is divested of the franchise, the right to file a court action stands ... as his most fundamental political right, because preservative of all rights. 41 Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1, 15, 112 S.Ct. 995, 117 L.Ed.2d 156 (1992) (Blackmun, J., concurring in the judgment). 42 That inmates have a well-established constitutional right to access the courts, based in part on the First Amendment, is clear. Less clear are the contours of free speech rights in the prison setting. No circuit has held that the Connick public concern limitation applies to prisoners' speech; conversely, no circuit has held that it does not. The defendants' reliance on Brookins v. Kolb, 990 F.2d 308 (7th Cir.1993), for the proposition is misplaced. The prisoner in that case was disciplined for misusing his authority and violating the rules of the Paralegal Base Committee (PBC) on which he sat. The PBC assisted inmates with their legal research and documents, and Brookins sent a letter on PBC letterhead to prison officials recommending the use of a lie-detector test in another inmate's case and stating that the PBC would pay for the use. He was removed from the committee for violating the rules requiring pre-approval of all committee correspondence and of all fund requests. He claimed retaliation for the exercise of his First Amendment rights under the Petition and Free Speech clauses. The court characterized his claim as one in violation of his associational rights, which it found to be quite limited in the prison context, and determined that he had not shown the prison's response to be unrelated to legitimate penological objectives. The court found that he did not state a claim under the Petition Clause, as the letter was about another prisoner's case. The court also dispensed with his free speech claim, finding the contents of the letter unprotected. Although the court mentioned that the letter was not on a matter of public concern, Brookins is more appropriately characterized as a prison employee in this situation, representing the committee in an inmate grievance proceeding. It is a step removed from his speech as an inmate. In any case, Brookins certainly does not implicate Connick as a limitation on a prisoner's right to access the courts. 43 Because it is not at issue in this case, we make no determination about the appropriateness of explicitly applying the public concern limitation to speech by prisoners, whose free speech rights are uncontrovertedly limited by virtue of their incarceration. We hold only that there is no authority for subjecting a prisoner's constitutional right to access the courts, an aspect of the First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances, to the public concern limitation described in Connick v. Myers. Nor would such a holding make sense as a policy matter. The right to access the courts is already limited to particularized causes of action--direct appeal, collateral attack, and § 1983 civil rights actions. These actions are always on a matter of personal concern to the prisoner, who can only achieve standing if he alleges a personal injury fairly traceable to a redressable wrong committed against him. 7 A public concern limitation would eliminate all prisoner suits protected by the right to access the courts; clearly, a judicial gloss on the First Amendment Free Speech Clause derived from the public employment setting is not an appropriate vehicle for annulling elaborate bodies of statutory law such as the habeas corpus statutes. 8 44 The Pickering balancing test, described in the preceding section, has been applied in a variety of First Amendment settings. See, e.g., Umbehr, 518 U.S. at 678, 116 S.Ct. 2342 (The tests that we have established in our government employment cases must be judicially administered with sensitivity to governmental needs, but First Amendment rights must not be neglected.... We therefore see no reason to believe that proper application of the Pickering balancing test cannot accommodate the differences between employees and independent contractors.). It can as easily be applied in the prison context, accommodating the difference between the government as employer and as jailor, as well as the difference between the free speech rights of a public employee and an inmate's right to access the courts. Certainly the government's interests as an employer are not identical to its interests as a jailor. Safety and order are a high priority in the prison setting, while they are assumed in the typical government office, where the ability, for example, to make hiring or contracting decisions with some degree of flexibility may be more important. A prisoner's First Amendment rights are not more extensive than those of a government employee; in fact, under most clauses of the First Amendment, they are much more strictly limited. However, a prisoner's right to access the courts is clearly established under a long line of Supreme Court precedent, and is for him, in fact, preservative of all rights. Given the distinctive rights of the two types of plaintiffs, the separate interests of the two types of government entities, and the dissimilar nature of the relationship between the plaintiff and the government in these two settings, any honest attempt to perform the balancing prescribed by the Supreme Court in Pickering cannot unhesitatingly import reasoning from the public employment setting into the prison setting. Again, context matters.