Court Opinion

ID: 9730794
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:24:05.150152+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:09.362691
License: Public Domain

Opinion
KAUS, P. J.
Habeas corpus proceeding. The superintendent and associate superintendent at the California Men’s Colony appeal from portions of a trial court order granting relief sought by petitioners Serna and Phillips, prisoners at the colony.
Facts
Petitioners are the pastor and assistant pastor in the Church of the C.O.N.V.I.C.T. Ministers, Universal Life Church, Charter Number 14588. An application to the prison administration for permission to expand the activities of their group included a proposal for a bank account to be established outside the prison. The money would be in the nature of religious donations and under the trust of the group’s outside secretary-treasurer, who lives in Morro Bay. The prison’s assistant superintendent and superintendent denied petitioners’ request to send money to the church’s outside bank account, and also denied petitioners’ request for recognition of their organization.
The Department of Corrections provides an inmate appeals system, which includes a third—and final—level appeal to the Director of *1013Corrections, who must respond within 20 working days. (Department of Corrections Administrative Manual [Manual], §§ 110.06, 110.12, 110.16.) Petitioners did not appeal the denial of their requests by the superintendent to the director. Instead, they filed a petition for writ of “mandamus”—treated as a petition for writ of habeas corpus—in the superior court.
Petitioners claimed that they were being unconstitutionally denied the right to hold meetings, to display their church flag, and—the only issue involved in this appeal—to send money to their outside church bank account. The trial court ordered the superintendent to permit petitioners to conduct religious services, denied the petition with respect to the flag for failure to exhaust administrative remedies, and granted the petition with respect to donations, ordering the superintendent “to allow donations” in accordance with provisions in the director’s rules concerning prisoner contributions to outside charities.
The Manual, in the section on inmate advisory and activity groups, provides that no “inmate activity group may have an outside bank account, . . .” (§ 323.17(c).) The Rules of the Director of Cqrrections (Cal. Admin. Code, tit. 15, § 3000 et seq.—Rules) permit prison superintendents to authorize “up to three campaigns for generally recognized charitable causes, annually” (Rules, § 3240) and, if a prisoner asks permission to make a donation, conditions approval on various factors, not challenged herein, such as that the prisoner has not been coerced, is not incompetent, and will not unduly deplete his funds. (Rules, § 3241.)1
The effect of the trial court’s ruling is that petitioners may transfer funds to their own outside bank account as if it were a “generally recognized charitable cause” the assets of which are ¡presumably not under the control of prison inmates.
Discussion
Petitioners’ theory in the trial court was that appellants’ refusal to permit petitioners to maintain an outside bank account constituted an impermissible infringement of their religious beliefs and practices.
*1014Appellants raise various contentions concerning the outside bank accounts. Only one need concern us: The trial court erred in granting relief because petitioners failed to exhaust their administrative remedies. We reverse the judgment, and direct the superior court to dismiss the petition.
The well established doctrine of exhaustion of administrative remedies applies to grievances lodged by prisoners (In re Muszalski (1975) 52 Cal.App.3d 500, 503, 508 [125 Cal.Rptr. 286]; In re Thompson (1975) 52 Cal.App.3d 780, 783-784 [125 Cal.Rptr. 261]), even when the grievances involve an alleged constitutional violation. (In re Thompson, supra, 52 Cal.App.3d at p. 783.)2
Nothing in the record suggests that resort to petitioners’ administrative remedies would have been futile. Petitioners were entitled, as stated, to appeal the denial by the superintendent directly to the director of the department. (Manual, § 110.06) and to obtain a ruling within 20 days (Manual, § 110.16).  A court “cannot presume” that an administrator “having adopted a particular rule or policy in like cases in the past, would necessarily have applied the same rule” in the next case. (Gantner & Mattern Co. v. California E. Com. (1941) 17 Cal.2d 314, 318 [109 P.2d 932].)  In this case, .although prison regulations forbid an “inmate activity group” to maintain an outside bank account (ante, fn. 1) neither the court nor petitioners know whether the director would apply a different standard if he found that the refusal to permit petitioners to maintain a bank account would unduly infringe on their freedom of religion.
Finally, nothing in the record suggests that to require petitioners to exhaust their administrative remedies would result in “irreparable injury.”  The exhaustion doctrine applies to claims alleging an infringement on religious beliefs or practices (Waddell v. Alldredge (3d Cir. 1973) 480 F.2d 1078, 1079) even where the infringement is direct, immediate and, if not prevented, irremediable (Jihaad v. Carlson (E.D.Mich. 1976) 410 F.Supp. 1132, 1134 [requirement that a Black Muslim shave contrary to religion]), and has been applied to situations in which the impact on the prisoner may be far more overwhelming than *1015the right to open an outside bank account. (In re Muszalski, supra, 52 Cal.App.3d 500 [records for parole consideration]; United States ex rel. Sanders v. Arnold (3d Cir. 1976) 535 F.2d 848, 851 [parole revocation]; Jones v. Carlson (5th Cir. 1974) 495 F.2d 209, 210 [litigation correspondence].)
Reversed.
Ashby, J., concurred.

 Since this case was argued, the Manual has been revised, and paragraph section 323.17(c) deleted. The parties agree—although for different reasons—that the prohibition in the Manual against outside bank accounts remains. In October 1977, the director issued an administrative bulletin stating that inmate “joint or group investments or outside accounts are prohibited.”

 In pointing out that even claims of constitutional proportions require exhaustion of a prisoner’s administrative remedies, we do not imply that on this record the maintenance of an outside bank account “can be made a religious rite and by the zeal of the practitioners swept into the First Amendment.” (Murdock v. Pennsylvania (1943) 319 U.S. 105, 109 [87 L.Ed. 1292, 1296, 63 S.Ct. 870, 891,146 A.L.R. 81].)