Court Opinion

ID: 9425784
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:15:50.067733+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:57.547731
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Powell,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
These cross-appeals concern the constitutionality, under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, of a regulation of the California Department of Corrections that prohibits all personal interviews of prison inmates by representatives of the news media. This regulation is substantially identical to the United States Bureau of Prisons policy statement whose validity is at issue in Saxbe v. Washington Post Co., post, p. 843. For the reasons stated in my dissenting opinion in that case, post, p. 850, I would hold that California’s absolute ban against prisoner-press interviews impermissibly restrains the ability of the press to perform its constitutionally established function of informing the people on the conduct of their government. Accordingly, I dissent from the judgment of the Court.
The California cross-appeals differ from the Washington Post case in one significant respect. Here the constitutionality of the interview ban is challenged by prisoners as well as newsmen. Thus these appeals, unlike Washington Post, raise the question whether, inmates as *836individuals have a personal constitutional right to demand interviews with willing reporters. Because I agree with the majority that they do not, I join Part I of the opinion of the Court.