In Human Rights Defense Center v. Uttecht, published December 11, 2025, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded summary judgment for the defendants. The plaintiff publisher publishes a habeas corpus guide that it distributes to prisoners. The guide contains sample pleadings with party names redacted. The state department of corrections adopted prisoner mail policies providing that individuals will not possess case law documents unless approved by officials’ and that individuals will not possess legal materials (including case law and legal documents) containing information about another individual incarcerated by the state. The department adopted these policies to promote inmate safety from “paper checking,” where inmates demand other inmates produce documentation on whether the inmate has committed a crime that other inmates look down upon. The prison at issue rejected at least 16 copies of the plaintiff’s book on the ground that it contains “case law.” The plaintiff wrote the prison’s mailroom sergeant, stating that censorship of the book violated the plaintiff’s 1st Amendment right to communicate with the prison’s inmates. The sergeant initially did not forward the book to the correction department’s publication review committee. Two months after the first rejection, the sergeant contacted the committee and asked that it uphold the mailroom’s decision. The committee overturned the mailroom, concluding that the book did not violate policy. In violation of corrections department policy, the sergeant never notified the plaintiff of the committee’s reversal. After the committee’s reversal, the mailroom failed to promptly deliver the book to numerous prisoners, with delays ranging to a year or more. The corrections department eventually rescinded the policy barring case law material. The ban on case law material containing inmates’ names remains, although inmates can access the same information on LexisNexis in the prison law library. The plaintiff sued the prison’s former superintendent and the sergeant, in their official and individual capacities, asserting violations of 1st and 14th Amendment rights and seeking damages and injunctive relief. An initial summary judgment was reversed by the 9th Circuit and remanded. On remand, the district court granted summary judgment again. The district court concluded that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity as to money damages, that the policies were justified by penological purposes, and providing notice to the publishers as required by policy would be too burdensome.
The 9th Circuit agreed that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity for enforcing the corrections department policies, because the plaintiff did not point to any precedent clearly establishing that the challenged policies were unconstitutional. The 9th Circuit disagreed with the district court’s ruling that injunctive relief would be ineffective against the defendants, because to the extent they were sued in their official capacities, the suit was effectively against the governmental entity. On the merits, the district court erred by failing to require the defendants to prove that the challenged policies advanced the asserted penological interests. It reversed summary judgment on these claims and remanded them. As for the suit against the sergeant for the delivery delays, the court concluded that the sergeant was not entitled to qualified immunity, because there was no penological justification for withholding the book after the committee established the book did not violate policy. Existing precedent therefore established that failing to distribute the book violated the 1st Amendment. Precedent did not have to dictate how long a delay was unlawful. There was also a question of fact on whether the sergeant was responsible for the delivery delays. Summary judgment on that claim was therefore reversed. As for the failure to provide notice to the publisher of the committee’s decision, qualified immunity barred monetary liability because the defendants could have reasonably believed that it was constitutionally permissible not to notify the publisher. The court remanded the injunctive relief claim on notification to the district court to allow the plaintiff to show the notifications would not be unduly burdensome.
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