Cline v. Fox

• Decision Date: 07 May 2004
• Docket Number: No. CIV.A.1:00 CV 175.,CIV.A.1:00 CV 175.
• Citation: 319 F.Supp.2d 685
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of West Virginia
• Parties: Roger E. CLINE, Plaintiff, v. William M. FOX, Warden, and James Rubenstein, Commissioner, Defendants.

319 F.Supp.2d 685

Roger E. CLINE, Plaintiff, v. William M. FOX, Warden, and James Rubenstein, Commissioner, Defendants.

No. CIV.A.1:00 CV 175.

United States District Court, N.D. West Virginia.

May 7, 2004.

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Robert M. Bastress, Esquire, WVU College of Law, Morgantown, WV, for Plaintiff Roger E. Cline.

Barry L. Koerber, Esquire, Assistant Attorney General, Charles Houdyschell, Esquire, Assistant Attorney General, Jendonnae L. Houdyschell, Attorney General Office, State Capitol Complex, Charleston, WV, Daynus Jividen, Esquire, Senior Assistant Attorney General, WV Division of Corrections, Charleston, WV, for Defendant William M. Fox, Warden.

Barry L. Koerber, Esquire, Assistant Attorney General, Charleston, WV, for Defendant James Rubenstein, Commissioner.

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

KEELEY, District Judge.

Before the Court are cross-motions for summary judgment filed by the plaintiff, Roger Cline, and the defendants, William F. Fox and James Rubenstein. Generally stated, the question presented by these motions is whether West Virginia Department of Corrections Policy Directive 503.00,¹ on its face and as applied, is unconstitutional. The Court finds that Policy Directive 503.00(V)(P), in particular, is not reasonably related to legitimate penological objectives insofar as it prohibits reading materials with any written depictions of sexual conduct but permits commercial pornography. Therefore, the Court concludes that Policy Directive 503.00(V)(P) is invalid, on its face and as applied, under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. Accordingly, the Court GRANTS the plaintiff's motion and DENIES the defendants' motion.

I. BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Plaintiff Roger Cline, an inmate with the West Virginia Division of Corrections ("DOC"), has been incarcerated at the St. Mary's Correctional Center ("St.Mary's") since December 1998. At St. Mary's, Cline ordered and received several "Paper Wings" adult-fiction books. On March 17, 2000, however, prison officials intercepted Cline's most recent shipment of Paper Wings books because the sender's name did not appear on St. Mary's "Approved Vendors List." In response, Cline petitioned the defendant, Warden William M. Fox, to amend the Approved Vendors List to include Komar Publishing, which publishes Paper Wings.

Warden Fox referred the petition to Deputy Warden Tony LeMasters, who determined that the Paper Wings books contained "obscene material" as defined by DOC Policy Directive 503.00(III). According to Policy Directive 503.00(V)(P), inmates cannot receive or possess obscene material; therefore, Deputy Warden LeMasters recommended denial of Cline's petition. Warden Fox adopted this recommendation and refused to add Komar Publishing to the Approved Vendors List. After unsuccessfully grieving this decision within the DOC, Cline filed a complaint pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1983 on October 16, 2000. He alleged that prohibiting his receipt of the Paper Wings books violated his constitutional rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

During discovery of the original § 1983 claim,² Cline gave an answer to an interrogatory indicating that books similar to Paper Wings were shelved in St. Mary's Reading Library. Warden Fox responded to this disclosure by closing the library and instructing Deputy Warden Sandy Tanczyn to review its contents and remove any material that violated the obscenity ban in DOC Policy Directive 503.00. Tanczyn formed an ad hoc staff of unit managers, counselors, case managers, and office assistants to individually read every book in the library. She distributed copies of Policy Directive 503.00 to the staff members, and instructed them to purge anything containing language that "could be derived as a sexual turn-on, according to the policy directive." (Tanczyn Depo. at 16.) When a staff member inquired about how to make this judgment, Tanczyn simply told them to "[j]ust go by the policy directive." (Id. at 18.) Tanczyn admits that her specific direction to eliminate any book that contained language that might arouse the reader was her own interpretation of the Policy Directive, and not that of Warden Fox.

The entire Reading Library review was completed in approximately two months. At its conclusion, the staff had purged 259 of the 1226 volumes, or nearly 21% of the library's total inventory. Among the books removed were William Styron's Sophie's Choice, Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge, and a number of works by John Updike.

Cline immediately amended his complaint on October 31, 2001 to allege that the library purge was a violation of his rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. On March 19, 2003, this Court dismissed the new claim without prejudice because Cline had failed to exhaust his administrative remedies. Cline I, 266 F.Supp.2d 489, 501 (N.D.W.Va.2003). Nonetheless, in its Order, the Court upheld the constitutionality of DOC Policy Directive 503.00 as applied to his possession of Paper Wings books. Id.

On March 26, 2003, Cline moved the Court to reconsider its March 19, 2003 Order to the extent it dismissed the library purge claim for failure to exhaust administrative remedies. The Court granted the motion and retained jurisdiction over this case to consider the constitutionality of DOC Policy Directive 503.00 on its face and, specifically, as applied to the removal of books from the prison library.

II. ANALYSIS

At issue is the constitutionality of a prison regulation that prohibits inmate access to all reading materials containing a "sexually explicit" passage, but allows inmates to possess commercial pornography.³ Cline asserts that DOC Policy Directive 503.00, on its face and as applied, is unreasonably overbroad and fails to consider "a work's dominant themes and content or its value." Conversely, Warden Fox argues that the regulation does not implicate Cline's constitutional rights and is otherwise reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.

The parties do not dispute any material facts on the cross-motion for summary judgment. Therefore, the Court need only determine which party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c).

A. The Asserted Right

Warden Fox first contends that the prison's removal of any library books pursuant to Policy Directive 503.00 is not constitutionally suspect because inmates have no constitutional right to a reading library. See Counts v. Newhart, 951 F.Supp. 579, 587 (E.D.Va.1996) ("The Constitution contains no right of access to a general-literary library ...."); May v. Baldwin, 895 F.Supp. 1398, 1405 (D.Or.1995) (finding no constitutional right to general prison library privileges). He further maintains that, to the extent there could be a constitutional violation, Cline cannot advance a claim because he has not suffered actual harm.

The Court agrees — and Cline also concedes — that the Constitution does not require prisons to provide a reading library for their inmates. Even so, it does not necessarily follow that, once a prison offers access to a library, it has unfettered discretion to regulate the library's contents. See Bd. of Edu., Island Trees Union Free Sch. Dist. No. 26 v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 870-72, 102 S.Ct. 2799, 73 L.Ed.2d 435 (1982) (plurality) (prohibiting the improperly motivated removal of certain books from a school library); cf. also Neinast v. Bd. of Trs. of the Columbus Metro. Library, 346 F.3d 585, 591 (6th Cir.2003) (holding that a public library is a limited public forum); Kreimer v. Bureau of Police for the Town of Morristown, 958 F.2d 1242, 1259 (3d Cir.1992) (same). In Pico, the plurality held that, notwithstanding a school board's "broad discretion in the management of school affairs," id. at 863, 102 S.Ct. 2799, the First Amendment limits this discretion to remove books from a school library. Id. at 869-72, 102 S.Ct. 2799. Like prisoners, public school students have no constitutional right to a school library and otherwise must bear certain restrictions on their rights generally. See, e.g., id. at 861-64, 102 S.Ct. 2799; see Counts, 951 F.Supp. at 587. Thus, the defendants fail to persuade the Court that the First Amendment cannot impose any limitations on the discretion of prison officials in removing books from prison library shelves simply because a prisoner has no right to be provided a library.⁴

In the case at bar, Cline has standing to assert a claim with respect to the library purge. As this Court held in Cline I, inmates have a First Amendment right to receive information. 266 F.Supp.2d at 499. Inmates exercise that constitutional right when they read books from the prison library. See Kreimer, 958 F.2d at 1256 (observing that a public library is the "`quintessential' locus for the exercise of the right to receive information and ideas'"). Thus, a prison's selective removal of library books restricts an inmate's right to receive information. Cf. Pico, 457 U.S. at 866, 102 S.Ct. 2799 ("[T]he First Amendment rights of students may be directly and sharply implicated by the removal of books from the shelves of a school library."). Since DOC Policy Directive 503.00 operates to deny Cline access to numerous books, he has a cognizable claim for violation of his constitutional rights. See Elrod v. Burns, 427 U.S. 347, 373-74, 96 S.Ct. 2673, 49 L.Ed.2d 547 (1976) ("The loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.") (citing New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713, 91 S.Ct. 2140, 29 L.Ed.2d 822 (1971)).

B. Standard of Law

Ordinarily, courts determine the validity of an allegedly overbroad regulation by considering whether it "reaches a substantial amount of constitutionally protected conduct." City of Houston v. Hill, 482 U.S. 451, 458, 107 S.Ct. 2502, 96 L.Ed.2d 398 (1987) (quoting Village of Hoffman Estates v. The...