In August 2012, lawyers for the ACLU Foundation of Kansas (then the ACLU of Kansas & Western Missouri) and the ACLU of Missouri filed a class action lawsuit (Lane v. Lombardi ) on behalf of Caged Potential and a class of publishers and distributors. The lawsuit asserted that the Missouri Department of Corrections (DOC) had violated the due process rights of publishers and distributors by failing to give them notice and an opportunity to be heard when the DOC censors books and other publications mailed to inmates.
On November 15, 2012, the Judge Laughrey of the Federal District Court for the Western District of Missouri granted Caged Potential’s motion for a preliminary injunction, finding that the Due Process Clause obligates the DOC to give notice and an opportunity to be heard when it intercepts and refuses to deliver books and other materials that publishers and distributors mail to prisoners. The Court further ordered the DOC to provide such notice and an opportunity to be heard.
Since then our Legal Director, Doug Bonney, and lawyers with the ACLU of Missouri have worked with the DOC’s lawyers to draft notice and appeal procedures that comply with the Due Process Clause’s requirements. Those policies were put in place on a trial basis last summer and have been in effect permanently since early in 2014.
Under those policies, publishers and distributors are now getting notice when the DOC censors a publication and refuses to provide it to the inmate who ordered it. This month the DOC refused to give an inmate an edition of St. Louis Magazine merely because it contained an article on the death penalty. St. Louis Magazine received notice of the censorship and appealed that decision to the DOC’s administrators, who reversed the censorship decision and allowed the inmate to have the article on the death penalty.
This shows that the Lane case has advanced the First Amendment rights of inmates and outside publishers to communicate about important issues of public debate without unnecessary censorship by public officials.
For more information, see the links below:
http://www.stlmag.com/Blogs/SLM-Daily/May-2014/Missouri-Prisons-Overturn-Ban-of-St-Louis-Magazines-May-Issue/
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2014/05/missouri_prisons_ban_st_louis.php
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