A law firm is opposing newly proposed regulations by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) that have the potential to censor inmate reading material.
Leila Knox, an attorney with the law firm Bryan Cave, LLP, sent an e-mail to the CDCR’s Regulation and Policy Management Branch “On behalf of the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper.”
Knox wrote in response to a CDCR proposal to change regulations to ban what it considers “obscene material.”
“The Proposed Regulations include ostensibly minor revisions that could be used to work a fundamental change that would severely burden the First Amendment rights of both inmates in CDCR facilities and innocent third parties who wish to communicate with them,” Knox wrote.
Knox argued that the proposed regulations “reach far beyond and threaten to ban political speech and/or speech that is critical of the California prison system.”
In its Initial Statement of Reasons for the proposed regulations, the CDCR said it is attempting to prohibit publications that “indicate an association with groups that are oppositional to authority and society.”
According to the regulations, the CDCR will create a “Centralized List of Disapproved Publications” in the prison system. An example of a banned publication would be anything the CDCR deems “recruitment material for a Security Threat Group (STG).” Under these regulations, banned reading material would be considered contraband.
Current regulations prevent the CDCR from disallowing inmates’ incoming mail if the Department “disagree[s] with the sender’s or receiver’s morals, values, attitudes, veracity or choice of words.”
In a 1999 case, Crofton v. Roe, the U.S Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit struck down a regulation that disallowed an inmate from receiving a gift book.
Citing the fact that courts have relied on the First and 14th Amendment rights of publishers “to communicate with inmates” on numerous occasions, Knox pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1974 ruling in Procunier v. Martinez which states in part:
“Whatever the status of a prisoner’s claim to uncensored correspondence with an outsider, it is plain that the latter’s interest is grounded in the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech.”
Knox said the regulations are likely to fail because “they are both vague and overbroad” as an indicator of an inmate’s association with members or associates of STGs.
According to Knox’s research, “a law is unconstitutionally vague if it prohibits protected conduct … or if it allows for punishment of speech that is merely unpopular.”
The e-mail concluded with Knox’s assessment of the CDCR’s previously validating inmates as STG members due to their choice of reading material that included possession of anything written by prisoner and political activist George Jackson.
“Prison walls do not form a barrier separating prison inmates from the protections of the Constitution,” Knox wrote, citing other U.S. Supreme Court case precedents.
Knox said Bay View newspaper “provides thought-provoking stories and commentary, with a focus on the black community.”
The Bay View was founded in 1976. According to its website, it is “the second most visited black newspaper on the web.” It has won two awards for Excellence in Journalism and Freedom of Information from the Society of Professional Journalists, three Best of the Bay awards from the Bay Guardian, one National Black Newspaper of the Year from the National Black Chamber of Commerce, and a Best Community Newspaper from the Media Alliance.
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