Court Opinion

ID: 9483845
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:32:58.073094+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:51.997626
License: Public Domain

LOKEN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Though I concur in the result reached by the panel, I write separately because I disagree with the court’s premise that this ease is controlled by Flittie v. Solem, 827 F.2d 276. (8th Cir.1987).
An inmate has a constitutional right to reasonable access to the courts. This includes the-right to the assistance of inmate law clerks unless prison officials provide some other reasonable form of legal assistance. See Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S. 483, 489-90, 89 S.Ct. 747, 751, 21 L.Ed.2d-718 (1969). However, the inmate has no right to the assistance of a particular law clerk, nor does an inmate law clerk have a constitutional right to hold that position.
When prison officials dismiss a law clerk, even in retaliation for the legal services he has provided to an inmate client, there is little risk that the client’s right of access will be undermined as long as another source of assistance is made available. And if the client does lose effective assistance, he is perfectly capable of perceiving that loss and, if necessary, enforcing his right of access by bringing a § 1983 action in his own name. Thus, in Flittie, we held that the terminated law clerk had no standing to assert the client’s right of access in a jus tertii law suit.
The situation is different, however, if prison officials harass or punish the inmate law clerk for legal assistance provided to an inmate client but allow the law clerk to continue to provide such assistance. In these circumstances, the quality of the assistance provided by the law clerk will be adversely affected if the harassment succeeds in its unconstitutional purpose. Moreover, it is far more likely that this adverse effect will go undetected by the client, or will prove impossible to measure. Thus, I conclude that the retaliation claim asserted by Hamm in this case implicates the client’s right of access to the courts far more intensely than did the claim we rejected in Flittie.
Nevertheless, I concur in the dismissal of Hamm’s jus tertii claim. When harassment of a law clerk adversely affects the client’s right of access, it is the client whose constitutional rights are violated and who is therefore entitled to § 1983 relief. In this case, Hamm has not alleged that his *894inmate clients were unaware that harassment had undermined his legal assistance to them, or that they were otherwise unable to assert their access rights in their own name. Compare Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 445-46, 92 S.Ct. 1029, 1034, 31 L.Ed.2d 349 (1972). Therefore, although I do not consider the issue directly controlled by Flittie, I agree that Hamm has not established standing to assert a jus tertii claim.