Court Opinion

ID: 9488069
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:35:17.04723+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:40.281027
License: Public Domain

CALABRESI, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
This case is not about nude pictures. Nor is it about cartes de visites and fanciful visions of a Victorian civility that probably never existed and would, even if it had, have little to do with prison life in twentieth-*1058century America.1 Finally, it is not about whether the judgment of prison officials to let prisoners have trashy magazines is a good deed that should be rewarded. It is, instead, about the evidence that is required before a court may rule, on a motion for summary judgment, without a trial or evidentiary hearing, that a prison regulation is consistent with inmates’ constitutional rights.2 As Justice Stevens has observed, what most often really matters in reviewing a prison regulation is “the actual showing that the court demands of the State in order to uphold the regulation.” Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 100, 107 S.Ct. 2254, 2267, 96 L.Ed.2d 64 (1987) (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). By affirming the grant of summary judgment on a record that is embarrassingly bare, the majority permits the upholding of contestable regulations without requiring any showing by prison officials. Because such an approach is both unwise and contrary to established precedents, I respectfully dissent from the majority’s disposition of Giano’s First Amendment claim.
The Supreme Court has made clear that a prison regulation that affects inmates’ constitutional rights “is valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.” Turner, 482 U.S. at 89, 107 S.Ct. at 2261. As the majority notes, the High Court chose to adopt this “reasonableness” standard — rather than any of several other available and more demanding tests — in order to make sure that courts would not readily substitute their views for the considered judgments of prison administrators. See O’Lone v. Shabazz, 482 U.S. 342, 349, 107 S.Ct. 2400, 2404, 96 L.Ed.2d 282 (1987) (“To ensure that courts afford appropriate deference to prison officials, we have determined that prison regulations alleged to infringe constitutional rights are judged under a ‘reasonableness’ test less restrictive than that ordinarily applied to alleged infringements of fundamental constitutional rights.”); see also Turner, 482 U.S. at 84-89, 107 S.Ct. at 2259-62; Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401, 407-14, 109 S.Ct. 1874, 1878-82, 104 L.Ed.2d 459 (1989).
But once the strictness of our review has been lessened — out of proper respect for the informed judgments of officials who are responsible for prison safety and discipline — to a standard of “reasonableness,” we must be especially careful not to permit additional incantations of “deference” to lead us automatically to accept unsubstantiated assertions that a prison regulation is “reasonable.” As Justice Blackmun warned in Block v. Rutherford, 468 U.S. 576, 104 S.Ct. 3227, 82 L.Ed.2d 438 (1984), courts must not let “the rhetoric of judicial deference [substitute] for meaningful scrutiny of constitutional claims in the prison setting.” Id. at 592-94, 104 S.Ct. at 3235-36 (Blackmun, J., concurring in the judgment). For “deference to the administrative expertise and discretionary authority of correctional officials must be schooled, not absolute,” Campbell v. Miller, 787 F.2d 217, 227 n. 17 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 479 U.S. 1019, 107 S.Ct. 673, 93 L.Ed.2d 724 (1986), and “carte blanche deference [is] improper.” Thornburgh, 490 U.S. at 422, 109 S.Ct. at 1886 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (explaining the Supreme Court’s holding).
I have no argument with the majority that we should “accord substantial deference to the informed judgment of prison officials on matters of prison administration,” ante at 1055, and I would find its holding quite tenable had the defendants responded to this action “with edifying and illuminating rejoinders drawn from their unique expertise.” Williams v. Lane, 851 F.2d 867, 886 (7th Cir.1988) (Flaum, J., concurring), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 1047, 109 S.Ct. 879, 102 L.Ed.2d 1001 (1989). My problem is that the record developed below demonstrates that the prison officials’ judgment in this case was *1059anything but informed) and was instead little more than a knee-jerk reaction, a set of “reflexive, rote assertions that existing conditions are dictated by security concerns and that the cost of change is prohibitive”. Id. During discovery, for example, Giano asked defendant Senkowski, the Superintendent of the Clinton Facility, about the decision by the Central Office Review Committee (“CORC”) that non-commercial nude photographs posed security risks. (This was, it is important to remember, the sole justification for the policy to exclude such pictures.) Sen-kowski replied: “I have no personal knowledge of the specifics considered by CORC when they make their final determinations.” Interrog. Resp. by Senkowski, PI. Mot. for Summ. J., Ex. C, at 2. Similarly, when Giano asked Senkowski and defendant Coughlin, the Commissioner of the Department of Correctional Services, about the number of misbehavior reports that had resulted from the possession of non-commercial nude photographs, both responded: “I have no personal knowledge,” Id.; Interrog. Resp. by Coughlin, PI. Mot. for Summ. J., Ex. D, at 2.
The Supreme Court has assured us that the “reasonableness” standard is not “toothless.” See Thornburgh, 490 U.S. at 414, 109 S.Ct. at 1882. And the precedents that bind us demonstrate what is meant by having “teeth.” The Supreme Court and this Court have always looked to, and in effect required, a complete factual record before passing on the “reasonableness” of a prison regulation. In Turner, for example, the High Court, in finding one set of prison regulations constitutionally valid and another set invalid, relied heavily on the extensive evidence developed in full trials. See 482 U.S. at 91-99, 107 S.Ct. at 2262-67. Similarly, in Thornburgh, the Supreme Court.based its ruling on findings of a district court that were the result of a lengthy bench trial. See 490 U.S. at 403, 414-19 & n. 12, 109 S.Ct. at 1876, 1882-85 & n. 12. And in Fromer v. Scully, 874 F.2d 69 (2d Cir.1989), we did the same. See id. at 71-76; see also Young v. Coughlin, 866 F.2d 567, 570 (2d Cir.) (reversing a grant of summary judgment because “the district court should not have dismissed appellant’s first amendment claim without requiring prison officials to establish the basis for the first amendment restrictions imposed”), cert. denied, 492 U.S. 909, 109 S.Ct. 3224, 106 L.Ed.2d 573 (1989).
Other Circuits have done no less. Thus, in Reed v. Faulkner, 842 F.2d 960 (7th Cir.1988), the Seventh Circuit refused to uphold a prison regulation on hair length, even though it was “plausibly supported by considerations of safety and security,” because prison officials had yet to present any evidence of danger. Id. at 962-64. Judge Posner, writing for the Court, would not permit this prison rule to be defended through “the piling of conjecture upon conjecture,” even though other courts had upheld similar regulations. Id. at 963. Similarly, in Whitney v. Brown, 882 F.2d 1068 (6th Cir.1989), the Sixth Circuit rejected a prison restriction on religious gatherings when a hearing revealed that officials could not produce any evidence and could provide only “a flurry of disconnected and self-conflicting points” to support the regulation. Id. at 1074.
The majority’s willingness to accept a summary judgment disposition of Giano’s First Amendment claim, instead, completely ignores the real possibility that evidence developed over the course of a trial (or some other hearing) might demonstrate that the regulation in question is not “reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.” See Turner, 482 U.S. at 97-99, 107 S.Ct. at 2266-67 (repeatedly stressing that “the record,” developed in a trial before the district court, revealed that a bar on marriages was not reasonably related to the purported interests put forth by officials); Williams, 851 F.2d at 872, 881 (finding a prison regulation invalid after a trial revealed “inconsistencies and contradictions” in prison officials’ statements, which' led their “explanations for security concerns [to be] discredited”).
Admittedly, there are regulations so obviously related to legitimate penological concerns that challenges to them may be dismissed at the summary judgment stage based simply upon an (irrefutable) “common sense determination.” Ante at 1055. For example, the federal regulation that bars inmates in federal prisons from receiving publi*1060cations that depict “procedures for the construction or use of weapons, ammunition, bombs or incendiary devices,” 28 C.F.R. § 540.71(b) (1992), is so plainly necessary for prison security that no genuine issue of material fact can be raised as to its reasonableness. That some regulations are indisputably valid does not mean, however, “that anything prison officials can justify is valid because they have somehow justified it,” Whitney, 882 F.2d at 1074, nor does it mean that summary judgment is appropriate every time prison officials can articulate a possible but unsupported foundation for a contested regulation.
In seeking to demonstrate that common sense supports summary judgment here, the majority cites several decisions from other Courts of Appeals. In fact, these cases do not help the majority. Only one, Trapnell v. Riggsby, 622 F.2d 290 (7th Cir.1980), is a full opinion, and there the “assaultive background of Marion’s inmates” was stressed to uphold a regulation similar to that at issue here. Id. at 292-94. In this case, instead, there is nothing in the record to indicate any special risks that might serve to buttress the regulation’s reasonableness. The other appellate decisions are all unpublished orders, which, notwithstanding the majority’s claim to the contrary, ante at 1055, specifically constitute no more than “‘a restricted railroad ticket, good for this day and train only.’” See, e.g., 7th Cir.R. 53(2)(iv) (explaining that unpublished orders “shall not be cited or used as precedent” in any court within the circuit); 9th Cir.R. 36-3 (same). More important, all but one of these eases do not appear to be apposite.
In Furrow v. Magnusson, No. 91-1585, 1992 WL 73154 (1st Cir. Apr. 10, 1992), the First Circuit upheld the confiscation of noncommercial nude photographs because they were taken while the inmate’s girlfriend was visiting him: “the seized photographs were obtained in violation of valid prison rules, which bar excessive ... physical displays which could be offensive to others during visits[, and] confiscation ... reasonably served the prison’s interest in ensuring that its rules are observed.” Id. at **1. In Bullock v. McGinnis, No. 92-2860, 1993 WL 533325 (7th Cir. Dec. 21, 1993), the Seventh Circuit, after highlighting that its Trapnell decision relied on “the assaultive background of [the] particular prison’s inmates,” simply upheld prison officials’ decision to confiscate a non-commercial nude photograph from a specific prisoner who had “convictions of deviate sexual assault and aggravated kidnapping.” Id. at **4. And in Davis v. Yohey, No. 91-16208, 1992 WL 389253 (9th Cir. Dec. 22, 1992), the prisoner did “not challenge the merits of the district court’s decision” that the prison rule was valid. Id. at **3. In other words, each of these cases was properly decided by summary order precisely because each turned on particular facts and circumstances, and all were different from ours.
The only Court of Appeals decision that seems on point is the Sixth Circuit’s unpublished order in Patterson v. Koehler, No. 83-1278, 718 F.2d 1100, 1983 U.S.App. LEXIS (6th Cir. Aug. 29, 1983), “applying Trapnell to uphold [a] prison policy” like the one before us. But the fact that one appellate court in an unreported decision (which relies only on a quite different case from another circuit) would uphold a prison rule barring these pictures at summary judgment hardly makes the regulation “common sense.” Rather, it underscores how easy it is for courts occasionally to yield thoughtlessly to claims of necessity by those in authority. In Patterson, a prisoner making an earnest and not trivial claim (never previously addressed fully by his circuit’s Court of Appeals) that his constitutional rights had been violated was not only denied a chance to prove his claim at trial, but was not even given a fully reasoned explanation as to why his claim was rejected. It is hard to give much weight to such an unpublished conclusion.
In the end, the most that can be said is that the notion that non-commercial nude photographs may present unique security risks is a plausible supposition. But it is also plausible that these pictures might diminish violence by mollifying prisoners or that they might have no effect either way. We just do not know, and the defendants have presented no evidence beyond self-serving assertions. Since the prison rule remains in effect until it *1061is shown to be unconstitutional, however, we create no risks to discipline by requiring a full examination of the facts. And I cannot discern a sound reason blindly to take as true speculations about a link between non-commercial nude photographs and inmate violence and to deprive Giano of the opportunity to demonstrate that no such link actually exists.
The majority, moreover, accepts wholesale and without question the unsubstantiated assertions of prison officials that Giano’s suggested alternative to a complete ban on noncommercial nude photographs — allowing possession of the pictures but prohibiting their display or distribution — is not workable. But the officials have not submitted one iota of evidence as to why such an alternative is unworkable, while commentators and courts have, instead, reached the opposite conclusion. See Pepperling v. Crist, 678 F.2d 787, 790-91 (9th Cir.1982) (indicating that a prohibition on displaying non-commercial nude photographs can be a viable alternative to a complete ban); Michael B. Mushlin, Bights of Prisoners 231 (2d ed. 1994) (“It is difficult to understand how an intolerable risk of disorder is posed [by non-commercial nude pictures] when there exists the easily available alternative of prohibiting the display of the photographs.”).
What is more, there are any number of other alternatives to a complete ban on noncommercial nude photographs (besides the one Giano suggests) that may turn out to be feasible — e.g., allowing inmates to be sent photographs but providing that the pictures may be seen only at appointed places, or allowing photographs to be received and seen for a brief time before they must be returned. Cf. Dawson v. Scurr, 986 F.2d 257 (8th Cir.) (discussing a regulation that allowed inmates access to sexually explicit materials just in reading rooms), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 114 S.Ct. 232, 126 L.Ed.2d 187 (1993). Since the defendants have not come close to “demonstrating] that they have rejected a less restrictive alternative because of reasonably founded fears that it will lead to greater harm,” they have plainly not “succeeded] in demonstrating that the alternative they in fact selected was not an ‘exaggerated response’ under Turner.” Thornburgh, 490 U.S. at 419, 109 S.Ct. at 1885.
On this record, therefore, it is hard to conclude that “the accommodation here has more than a de minimis effect on valid peno-logical interests.” Benjamin v. Coughlin, 905 F.2d 571, 577 (2d Cir.) (citing Turner, 482 U.S. at 91, 107 S.Ct. at 2262), cert. denied, 498 U.S. 951, 111 S.Ct. 372, 112 L.Ed.2d 335 (1990). Giano may well face an uphill battle in seeking to show that a total ban on non-commercial nude photographs is unreasonable and has only a minimal effect on penological interests. But he should have the chance to climb that hill and fight that battle.3
The Supreme Court has told us that the Constitution does not stop at the prison door. See Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 405-06, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 1807-08, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1974). As a result, today’s holding — at the summary judgment stage when we must view all evidence and draw all inferences in Giano’s favor — that the prison regulation at issue' here does not violate Giano’s First Amendment rights cannot be read simply as *1062another way of saying that prisoners really have no prima facie constitutional right to receive correspondence of this sort. For this reason, the holding goes far beyond endangering the rights of prisoners. If the jail house is not what justifies reliance on unsubstantiated assertions, who is to say when such assertions are to be taken as gospel and when they are not?
Nor can one count on those in authority to limit their use of conjecture to cases in which prisoners are involved. There are unfortunately all too many examples which do not involve prisoners and which, in retrospect, turned out to be utterly wrong. Even were we inclined, therefore, complacently to accept restrictions on prisoners, we could not dismiss this holding as affecting only them. The Pentagon Papers case is one celebrated instance in which the Supreme Court courageously resisted such scare tactics in the absence of proof. See New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713, 714, 91 S.Ct. 2140, 2141, 29 L.Ed.2d 822 (1971) (holding that the Government had not met its “burden of showing justification” for a prior restraint on the publication of documents related to the Vietnam war).4 Conversely, Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 65 S.Ct. 193, 89 L.Ed. 194 (1944), is the most tragic example of judicial failure to require facts before infringing on admitted constitutional rights. It is also an especially apt instance, for the Supreme Court has itself come to recognize that it was the dissenters in that case who had it right. See City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469, 501, 109 S.Ct. 706, 725, 102 L.Ed.2d 854 (1989) (citing Justice Murphy’s dissent in Korematsu to support the proposition that “blind judicial deference to legislative or executive pronouncements of necessity” is inappropriate).
What is involved here may well be very small in comparison to what was at stake in Korematsu or in the Pentagon Papers ease, but the principle is the same. Words are cheap and facts are often surprising and always essential. Whenever the validity of claims by those in authority is measured through surmise, prejudgment and intuition in summary settings rather than through data demonstrated at leisure, the constitutional freedoms of us all are put in peril.5

. Romanticized images of Victorian propriety have been debunked in numerous historical accounts of the period. See, e.g., John D'Emilio & Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America 112-138 (1988).

. It is not for us to say whether correspondence of this sort raises First Amendment issues — for the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that First Amendment interests are implicated by regulations relating to prisoner mail. See Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401, 407-14, 109 S.Ct. 1874, 1878-82, 104 L.Ed.2d 459 (1989); Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 405-14, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 1807-12, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1974).

. The majority is correct that in this circuit, after Fromer, see 874 F.2d at 74, Giano "bears the burden of proving that the disputed regulation is unreasonable.” Ante at 1054. And this is so even though the Supreme Court has avoided deciding the question of who has the ultimate burden of proof, see Thornburgh, 490 U.S. at 414 n. 12, 109 S.Ct. at 1882 n. 12, and has simply indicated that prison officials are not required to demonstrate the unreasonableness of all the possible alternatives to a challenged regulation. See O'Lone, 482 U.S. at 350, 107 S.Ct. at 2405; Turner, 482 U.S. at 90-91, 107 S.Ct. at 2262-63. There are, however, any number of ways in which Giano might go about showing that "the logical connection between the regulation and the asserted goal is so remote as to render the policy arbitrary or irrational.” Turner, 482 U.S. at 89-90, 107 S.Ct. at 2262. He might, for instance, be able to show that penal institutions without a ban on non-commercial nude photographs have experienced fewer incidents of inmate violence than those with such a ban. Or he might demonstrate that other penal institutions have adopted less restrictive regulations with no adverse effects. In any event, the fact that it is up to Giano to make such a showing cannot support a decision that precludes him from trying.

. Erwin N. Griswold, who argued as Solicitor General in support of an injunction barring the publication of the Pentagon Papers, later came to agree that the Supreme Court made the right decision in refusing to allow such a prior restraint on the evidence before it. See Dennis Hevesi, Erwin Griswold of Harvard, Ex-Solicitor General, 90, N.Y. Times, Nov. 20, 1994, § 1, at 58; Erwin N. Griswold, ‘No Harm Was Done', N.Y. Times, June 30, 1991, § 4, at 15.

. I am only slightly comforted by the majority's reassurance that "[t]here is a point where judicial deference to executive or administrative expertise must be denied.” Ante at 1057. I do not doubt the majority's sincerity at all. But unfortunately such reassurances have all too often proved vain. Thus, in American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 70 S.Ct. 674, 94 L.Ed. 925 (1950), the Supreme Court emphasized the narrowness of its decision and stated firmly that, despite its holding that labor union officials could be required to take an oath that they were not members of the Communist party, there would be no wholesale proscriptions of Communists or their party “while this court sits.” See id. at 404, 410, 70 S.Ct. at 687, 690. Yet after only nine years, as Justice Black detailed in his celebrated dissent in Barenblatt v. United States, 360 U.S. 109, 79 S.Ct. 1081, 3 L.Ed.2d 1115 (1959), "Communists or suspected Communists have been denied an opportunity to work ... in just about any ... job ... [and] are singled out and, as a class, are subjected to inquisitions which the Court suggests would be unconstitutional but for the fact of 'Communism.' " Id. at 152-53, 79 S.Ct. at 1107. Yet, as he concluded, “this Court still sits!” Id.