CHICAGO (CN) — Illinois inmates at the Will County Adult Detention Facility won a partial legal victory Monday, with a federal judge in Chicago ruling that several of the jail’s media and mail policies violate their civil rights.
U.S. District Judge LaShonda Hunt, a Joe Biden appointee, found the jail placed unconstitutional barriers on inmates’ access to certain forms of media and mail sent from P.O. boxes. However, the judge allowed the jail’s ban on “sexual and inappropriate material” to stand.
“Having considered the arguments of the parties and the applicable law, the court finds that plaintiffs’ claims are justiciable, the Sexual and Inappropriate Content Policy is constitutional, but the Media Policy and the P.O. Box Policy are unconstitutional,” Hunt wrote in her 26-page ruling.
A Will County inmate first sued the jail, located in the Chicago suburb of Joliet, on civil rights claims in 2017 after he was denied mail because of the jail’s media restrictions. These included, among other rules, a ban on newspapers, internet printouts, social media materials and all mail from P.O. box return addresses. The case gathered steam in federal court for nearly four years, eventually becoming a class action. In September 2021, U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood, a Barack Obama appointee, certified a class of current and future Will County jail inmates affected by the same media rules.
By that point, the inmates had expanded their claims to challenge unreasonable delays in the jail’s mail processing and its ban on sexual content or other materials deemed inappropriate by mailroom staff. One inmate representing the class said the jail used the “inappropriate” rule to confiscate pictures of his wife; the inmate who originated the 2017 suit said in a separate filing he was unfairly denied a book on the history of tattoos based on the same rule.
Both the inmates and the jail moved for summary judgment, and Hunt issued her split decision Monday. She used the “Turner test,” based on the 1987 Supreme Court case Turner v. Safley, to evaluate the prisoners’ claims. In Turner, the high court upheld restrictions on correspondence between inmates at a Missouri jail, but also found the inmates had a constitutional right to get married.
“The Supreme Court has explained that ‘prison walls do not form a barrier separating prison inmates from the
protections of the Constitution,'” Hunt wrote. “The First Amendment is no exception to that rule.”
The “Turner test” is a four-factor standard meant to evaluate whether a prison regulation is justified and whether there are workable alternatives if a regulation negatively impacts prison staff or inmates. Applying the Turner test, Hunt concluded that the jail’s ban on internet materials and other media content isn’t justifiable.
Hunt agreed that the jail has a security interest in banning certain content; it argued the bans were necessary to stop prisoners from fighting over personal beliefs, gang affiliations and sexual preferences inferred from each others’ media consumption. But those security concerns do not outweigh the inmates’ rights, especially as Hunt found the jail could still review media the prisoners have access to.
“In sum, although the first Turner factor is satisfied, the Court finds the Media Policy falls short on the remaining three factors and is unconstitutional,” Hunt wrote.
She was even more skeptical of Will County’s ban on mail coming from a P.O. box, further finding that, as applied, the rule also violates prisoners’ right to receive religious literature.
“Though not raised by plaintiffs, defendants could also have staff screen all mail but deny correspondence that does not have an ascertainable sender. Under the Will County Adult Detention Facility’s current policy, plaintiff’s P.O. Box mail is denied even when it comes from identifiable senders,” Hunt wrote.
Hunt conceded that security interests outweigh prisoners’ First Amendment rights regarding the jail’s ban on inappropriate material. Though the inmates focused on material that could be seen as sexual, Hunt wrote that the actual regulation was much broader.
“While plaintiffs focus mainly on the language prohibiting ‘sexual or other inappropriate content,’ they gloss over the full text of the relevant provision in the Mail Procedures Policy of the Inmate Handbook, which states that ‘any mail containing gang signs, symbols, initials or graffiti, maps, sexual or other inappropriate content that may jeopardize the order and security of the facility will be confiscated,'” Hunt said.
“Under the challenged policy, plaintiffs are still permitted to access a broad range of publications,” she added.