Court Opinion

ID: 9475464
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:28:02.849148+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:43.933519
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree with our Court and the court below that prison officials do not abridge an inmate’s substantive first amendment rights when they refuse to permit the letter in question here to circulate in the prison. The letter, written on stationery headed, “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, INVISIBLE EMPIRE, KNIGHTS OF THE KU KLUX KLAN, INTERNATIONAL OFFICES,” says:
Dear William:
I received your letter today. The one letter i got told me to see the chapl in was in Dayton. Nother one said he was in Columbus. I got one of my officers checking it out now. I have got some good news for you. Get about three people to fill out the application for the Klansman newspaper and send it down to the nat. office along with a check or money order, If they refuse you to have the paper you will have the national office backing you up. We will stand behind you too! I want to come and see you and any one else that is interested in the Klan. Can you set up a meeting for us?
I dont want to come under f alse name. Please let me know what you can do.
Very Truly Yours
For God, Race, Nation
JOHN K__
KLEAGLES REALM OF OHIO
A sizeable percentage of the prison population is black, and the circulation of this letter and the Ku Klux literature described in it, as well as the possibility of the Ku Klux Klan organizational meeting mentioned in the letter, may well lead to fights in the prison. The eighth amendment permits punishment that severely limits the personal liberties of convicted felons, including limits on the right to disseminate Ku Klux Klan literature in a prison that may well lead to strife and violent conduct. The prison officials here believed, and I agree, that introducing Ku Klux Klan materials into the prison population would likely lead to violent conduct. On these facts, the prison officials properly rejected the letter.
I part company with the Court on the due process issue. Due process requires that the prisoner be notified of the rejected letter. Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1973). He was notified here. Due process does not require that the constitutional notice requirement be reduced to an administrative regulation so long as adequate notice in fact occurs. Notice is notice, and it need not be packaged in some particular way that appeals to the appellate judge’s penchant for order and neatness. Of course, if an institution does not give some type of notice in every case, such a set of inconsistent practices under the due process clause must be changed.
Martinez does not suggest that procedures required by due process be separately written out in a regulation. Our court and the parties cite no authority and refer to no legal tradition that requires that the constitutional notice requirement be put in an administrative regulation, and I know of no such authority or tradition.
In addition, due process as articulated in Martinez is satisfied so long as some reasonable system exists (1) for sending the rejected letter back to the writer so that the writer receives notice of the rejection and (2) for allowing the writer to initiate a procedure to protest the rejection. Although the due process issue concerning the author of the letter was raised in the complaint below and on appeal, the District *246Court did not address this question. We do not know what procedures exist in the prison to provide notice of rejection to the author of a personal letter or to permit the author to protest. The case should therefore be remanded to the District Court for findings of fact and conclusions of law under Rule 52, Fed.R.Civ.P. on this issue.