Turner v. Safley (1987)

Turner v. Safley (1987)

482 U.S. 78

Leonard Safley and other inmates brought a class action suit challenging two regulations of the Missouri Division of Corrections relating to inmate-to-inmate correspondence and inmate marriages. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri relied on Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396 (1974), and, applying a strict scrutiny standard of review, found both regulations unconstitutional. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.

Opinion of the Court: O’Connor, Powell, Rehnquist, Scalia, White.

Concurring in part and dissenting in part: Stevens, Blackmun, Brennan, Marshall. 

MR. JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case requires us to determine the constitutionality of regulations promulgated by the Missouri Division of Corrections relating to inmate marriages and inmate-to-inmate correspondence. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, applying a strict scrutiny analysis, concluded that the regulations violate respondents’ constitutional rights. We hold that a lesser standard of scrutiny is appropriate in determining the constitutionality of the prison rules. Applying that standard, we uphold the validity of the correspondence regulation, but we conclude that the marriage restriction cannot be sustained.…  

Two regulations are at issue here. The first of the challenged regulations relates to correspondence between inmates at different institutions. It permits such correspondence “with immediate family members who are inmates in other correctional institutions,” and it permits correspondence between inmates “concerning legal matters.” Other correspondence between inmates, however, is permitted only if “the classification/treatment team of each inmate deems it in the best interest of the parties involved.” … The District Court found that the rule “as practiced is that inmates may not write non-family inmates.” …  

The challenged marriage regulation, … permits an inmate to marry only with the permission of the superintendent of the prison, and provides that such approval should be given only “when there are compelling reasons to do so.” … The term “compelling” is not defined, but prison officials testified at trial that generally only a pregnancy or the birth of an illegitimate child would be considered a compelling reason.… The District Court issued a memorandum opinion and order finding both the correspondence and marriage regulations unconstitutional. The court, relying on Procunier v. Martinez, … applied a strict scrutiny standard.…  

The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed.… The Court of Appeals held that the District Court properly used strict scrutiny in evaluating the constitutionality of the Missouri correspondence and marriage regulations. Under Procunier v. Martinez, the correspondence regulation could be justified “only if it furthers an important or substantial governmental interest unrelated to the suppression of expression, and the limitation is no greater than necessary or essential to protect that interest.” … The correspondence regulation did not satisfy this standard because it was not the least restrictive means of achieving the security goals of the regulation. In the Court of Appeals’ view, prison officials could meet the problem of inmate conspiracies by exercising their authority to open and read all prisoner mail.… The Court of Appeals also concluded that the marriage rule was not the least restrictive means of achieving the asserted goals of rehabilitation and security.…  

We begin, as did the courts below, with our decision in Procunier v. Martinez, … which described the principles that necessarily frame our analysis of prisoners’ constitutional claims. The first of these principles is that federal courts must take cognizance of the valid constitutional claims of prison inmates.… Prison walls do not form a barrier separating prison inmates from the protections of the Constitution. Hence, for example, prisoners retain the constitutional right to petition the Government for the redress of grievances; … they are protected against invidious racial discrimination by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; … and they enjoy the protections of due process.… Because prisoners retain these rights, “[w]hen a prison regulation or practice offends a fundamental constitutional guarantee, federal courts will discharge their duty to protect constitutional rights.” …   

… A second principle identified in Martinez, however, is the recognition that “courts are ill equipped to deal with the increasingly urgent problems of prison administration and reform.” … As the Martinez Court acknowledged, “the problems of prisons in America are complex and intractable, and, more to the point, they are not readily susceptible of resolution by decree.” … Running a prison is an inordinately difficult undertaking that requires expertise, planning, and the commitment of resources, all of which are peculiarly within the province of the Legislative and Executive Branches of Government. Prison administration is, moreover, a task that has been committed to the responsibility of those branches, and separation of powers concerns counsel a policy of judicial restraint. Where a state penal system is involved, federal courts have … additional reason to accord deference to the appropriate prison authorities.…

Our task, then, as we stated in Martinez, is to formulate a standard of review for prisoners’ constitutional claims that is responsive both to the “policy of judicial restraint regarding prisoner complaints and [to] the need to protect constitutional rights.” … As the Court of Appeals acknowledged, Martinez did not itself resolve the question that it framed.… We resolve it now: when a prison regulation impinges on inmates’ constitutional rights, the regulation is valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests. In our view, such a standard is necessary if “prison administrators …, and not the courts, [are] to make the difficult judgments concerning institutional operations.” … Subjecting the day to-day judgments of prison officials to an inflexible strict scrutiny analysis would seriously hamper their ability to anticipate security problems and to adopt innovative solutions to the intractable problems of prison administration. The rule would also distort the decision making process, for every administrative judgment would be subject to the possibility that some court somewhere would conclude that it had a less restrictive way of solving the problem at hand. Courts inevitably would become the primary arbiters of what constitutes the best solution to every administrative problem, thereby “unnecessarily perpetuat[ing] the involvement of the federal courts in affairs of prison administration.” …

… Several factors are relevant in determining the reasonableness of the regulation at issue. First, there must be a “valid, rational connection” between the prison regulation and the legitimate governmental interest put forward to justify it.… Thus, a regulation cannot be sustained where the logical connection between the regulation and the asserted goal is so remote as to render the policy arbitrary or irrational. Moreover, the governmental objective must be a legitimate and neutral one.…

A second factor relevant in determining the reasonableness of a prison restriction, … is whether there are alternative means of exercising the right that remain open to prison inmates. Where “other avenues” remain available for the exercise of the asserted right, … courts should be particularly conscious of the “measure of judicial deference owed to corrections officials … in gauging the validity of the regulation.” 

A third consideration is the impact accommodation of the asserted constitutional right will have on guards and other inmates, and on the allocation of prison resources generally.…

… Finally, the absence of ready alternatives is evidence of the reasonableness of a prison regulation.… By the same token, the existence of obvious, easy alternatives may be evidence that the regulation is not reasonable, but is an “exaggerated response” to prison concerns. This is not a “least restrictive alternative” test: prison officials do not have to set up and then shoot down every conceivable alternative method of accommodating the claimant’s constitutional complaint.… But if an inmate claimant can point to an alternative that fully accommodates the prisoner’s rights at de minimis cost to valid penological interests, a court may consider that as evidence that the regulation does not satisfy the reasonable relationship standard.…  

Applying our analysis to the Missouri rule barring inmate-to-inmate correspondence, we conclude that the record clearly demonstrates that the regulation was reasonably related to legitimate security interests. We find that the marriage restriction, however, does not satisfy the reasonable relationship standard, but rather constitutes an exaggerated response to petitioners’ rehabilitation and security concerns.…

… According to the testimony at trial, the Missouri correspondence provision was promulgated primarily for security reasons. Prison officials testified that mail between institutions can be used to communicate escape plans and to arrange assaults and other violent acts.…

The prohibition on correspondence between institutions is logically connected to these legitimate security concerns.… Moreover, the correspondence regulation does not deprive prisoners of all means of expression. Rather, it bars communication only with a limited class of other people with whom prison officials have particular cause to be concerned—inmates at other institutions within the Missouri prison system.  

… The Missouri marriage regulation prohibits inmates from marrying unless the prison superintendent has approved the marriage after finding that there are compelling reasons for doing so.… Generally only pregnancy or birth of a child is considered a “compelling reason” to approve a marriage.… Even under the reasonable relationship test, the marriage regulation does not withstand scrutiny.… No doubt legitimate security concerns may require placing reasonable restrictions upon an inmate’s right to marry, and may justify requiring approval of the superintendent. The Missouri regulation, however, represents an exaggerated response to such security objectives. There are obvious, easy alternatives to the Missouri regulation that accommodate the right to marry while imposing a de minimis burden on the pursuit of security objectives.…

MR. JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL, and MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN join, concurring in part and dissenting in part.

To the extent that this Court affirms the judgment of the Court of Appeals, I concur in its opinion. I respectfully dissent from the Court’s partial reversal of that judgment on the basis of its own selective forays into the record. When all the language about deference and security is set to one side, the Court’s erratic use of the record to affirm the Court of Appeals only partially may rest on an unarticulated assumption that the marital state is fundamentally different from the exchange of mail in the satisfaction, solace, and support it affords to a confined inmate. Even if such a difference is recognized in literature, history or anthropology, the text of the Constitution more clearly protects the right to communicate than the right to marry. In this case, both of these rights should receive constitutional recognition and protection.