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BOGUS BAN TARGETED SOME BUT NOT ALL MASS MEDIA PUBLICATIONS
An Arkansas county jail refused newspapers, magazines, and personal correspondence other than postcards. The publisher of Prison Legal News sued because it could not send its newspaper, books, and promotional letters to inmates. The district court found that the jail was violating the publisher’s 1st Amendment rights, and the jail appealed.
Last week, the 8th Circuit agreed that the jail’s postcard-only policy violated PLN’s 1st Amendment rights. Weighing the four factors for judging such bans adopted by the Supreme Court in Turner v. Safley, the Circuit found that while the jail’s policy had a valid and rational connection to the jail’s interests in reducing contraband and promoting efficiency, it created a de facto ban on PLN communicating its publications to inmates.
The jail argued its ban was intended to keep out drugs – presumably soaked into the newsprint – but the jail let the local paper in, leaving the appeals court skeptical that printed publications sent to wide audiences could be manipulated easily to deliver drugs to Baxter County inmates.
The 8th ruled that accommodating PLN would have no appreciable impact on the jail. The proposed alternative of allowing publisher mailings while restricting other non-legal personal mail to postcarda was a readily available means of permitting PLN to communicate.
Considering the factors, the 8th held that “[i]n light of the restrictiveness of the Jail’s policy barring all publications in contrast to the limited impact accommodating publishers would have, we conclude the postcard-only policy was not reasonably related to its penological goals and was instead an exaggerated response constituting a blanket prohibition” on PLN’s publications. The Circuit upheld an injunction prohibiting the jail from continuing the policy.
Human Rights Defense Center v. Baxter County, Case No. 23-1888, 2025 U.S.App. LEXIS 4222 (8th Cir. February 24, 2025)
Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987)
– Thomas L. Root