Azeez v. Fairman

• Citation: 795 F.2d 1296
• Decision Date: 30 June 1986
• Docket Number: No. 85-1330,85-1330
• Parties: Qaid Rafeeq AZEEZ and Abdullah Muhammad, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. James W. FAIRMAN, warden, John E. Wright, asst. warden, and A. Dodge, # 120 (C.O.), Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit)

Page 1296

795 F.2d 1296

Qaid Rafeeq AZEEZ and Abdullah Muhammad, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. James W. FAIRMAN, warden, John E. Wright, asst. warden, and A. Dodge, # 120 (C.O.), Defendants-Appellants.

No. 85-1330.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued May 9, 1986.

Decided June 30, 1986.

William D. Frazier, Atty. Gen., Chicago, Ill., for defendants-appellants.

Jamie Kittel, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiffs-appellees.

Before POSNER and EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judges, and CAMPBELL, Senior District Judge. ^*

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

The plaintiffs, Qaid Rafeeq Azeez and Abdullah Muhammad, brought suit under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 against the warden and other officials of the Pontiac Correctional Center, which is Illinois' maximum-security prison, charging that the defendants had deprived the plaintiffs of their religious freedom by refusing to recognize their Islamic names. After a bench trial the district judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and entered judgments of $150 for each plaintiff, from which the defendants appeal.

Azeez and Muhammad were committed to Pontiac under the names Stanley Russell and Jessie Fields. They later converted to Islam and adopted their present names. Russell changed his name by means of the statutory procedure provided for this purpose. Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 96. Fields just started calling himself Abdullah Muhammad. The defendants gave the plaintiffs "a/k/a" cards listing both their "committed" and their new names, but at times refused to let either plaintiff sign for various rights or privileges (such as library access, access to religious and notarial services, and commissary--i.e., snacks, cigarettes) in their Islamic names. The defendants also deprived the plaintiffs of these rights from time to time as punishment for the plaintiffs' refusing to sign their "committed" names. At other times, however, punishment was for their refusing to use the cards merely because their "committed" names were listed before their Islamic names.

The defendants do not contest the district court's finding that $150 is a reasonable amount of money to compensate each of the plaintiffs for not being allowed to sign his Islamic instead of his "committed" name, assuming such refusal was unlawful. Nor do the defendants deny, at least for purposes of this appeal, that they should have recognized Azeez's name change because he followed the prescribed statutory procedure. Rather, they argue that they are immune from having to pay damages to Azeez because they acted in good faith in refusing to recognize his name change, and that they did not violate Muhammad's constitutional rights at all.

A curiosity of the appeal is the defendants' asking us to set aside the declaratory relief that the district judge granted Muhammad, and Muhammad's vigorous opposition to that request. The judge did state in his opinion that he would enter a declaratory judgment, but the actual judgment entered reads in its entirety: "judgment entered in favor of the pltfs & against the dfts in the sum of $300 for deprivation of their religious liberties." There is not a word about declaratory relief. A litigant cannot appeal from a statement of intention to enter a judgment, as distinct from the judgment itself. Rule 58 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure says that the judgment must appear on a separate piece of paper--separate, that is, from the court's opinion. We take this requirement seriously. See, e.g., Stelpflug v. Federal Land Bank, 790 F.2d 47 (7th Cir.1986) (per curiam). As there was no declaratory judgment, there is no issue before us concerning the propriety of declaratory relief. Furthermore, a footnote in the defendants' brief states without contradiction, and the parties confirmed at oral argument, that Muhammad has been released from prison. He has no interest--no interest recognized by federal law, in any event--in obtaining a declaratory judgment concerning the religious liberties that he would be entitled to if he were in prison.

The parties' desire to have us resolve an issue that is not within our power to decide troubles us deeply. The federal courts must confine themselves to the jurisdiction, which is ample, that the Constitution gives them. Counsel must help us to carry out this duty. The determination of the propriety of a declaratory judgment, in a case in which such a judgment was never entered and would be moot if it had been, is not within that jurisdiction.

The award of damages, however, prevents the entire case from being moot, and requires us to consider two substantive issues: whether state prison officials can insist that a prisoner (Muhammad) use a statutory procedure for changing his name before they will recognize the name change, even if the change of name has a religious motivation; and whether they are immune from being held liable in damages for having refused to recognize a name change (Azeez's) made by means of the statutory procedure.

The district judge found, and the defendants do not challenge the finding, that the plaintiffs changed their names for sincere religious reasons and that it is offensive to their religious beliefs to be forced to sign their old names for any purpose. This is as true for Muhammad as for Azeez, even though Muhammad never attempted to change his name by the statutory means. It is also uncontested that a citizen of Illinois, which Muhammad (like Azeez) is, has a common law right to change his name. Reinken v. Reinken, 351 Ill. 409, 184 N.E. 639 (1933). The defendants' position, therefore, so far as Muhammad's case is concerned, is that considerations of prison discipline and security justify curtailing a prisoner's common law right to change his name, even when his motivation for exercising that right is religious.

There was a time when federal courts did not intervene in the internal affairs of prisons at all. (cf. Ruffin v. Commonwealth, 62 Va. (21 Gratt.) 790, 796 (1871)), and though that time is past, even today these courts regulate prisons with a considerably lighter touch than they regulate other public institutions alleged to deprive their charges or wards or employees of federal constitutional rights; see our extensive recent discussion of cases in Caldwell v. Miller, 790 F.2d 589, 595-600 (7th Cir.1986), another case involving prisoners' religious liberties. The security problems of present-day maximum-security prisons are acute. See, e.g., United States v. Silverstein, 732 F.2d 1338 (7th Cir.1984); United States v. Fountain, 768 F.2d 790 (7th Cir.1985). Recently we noted that "Pontiac is a den of murderers, rapists, and others with no respect for the law--and all too often nothing to lose from further mayhem." Walker v. Rowe, 791 F.2d 507, 512 (7th Cir.1986). We have therefore insisted that district judges in this circuit give great though not complete deference to the decisions of the prison authorities on matters affecting the maintenance of order. "We accord, as we must, prison officials wide-ranging deference in adopting policies that are needed to preserve internal order and security." Caldwell v. Miller, supra, 790 F.2d at 596.

Although the district court's opinion recognizes that Muhammad was not entitled to mutilate his identification card, threaten prison staff, and require that his name be changed on prison records, it does not recognize the practical difficulties that enforcing the common law right to change one's name would create for the prison authorities. Prisoners in maximum-security prisons do not dedicate themselves to making life easier for the guards and wardens. One way in which they can make life more difficult is by changing their names frequently. Every time a prisoner changes his name the prison staff must unlearn the old name and learn the new. If many prisoners happen to change their old names to the same new name (how many "Abdullah Muhammads" are there in the Illinois prison system today, we wonder?), they can cause chaos. Of course prisoners have numbers as well as names, but the plaintiffs' counsel suggested at argument that if a prisoner had religious scruples against being identified by number, these scruples must be honored too. Compare Bowen v. Roy, --- U.S. ----, 106 S.Ct. 2147, 90 L.Ed.2d 735 (1986). People on the outside rarely change their names (except women upon getting married--and that is changing), because of the confusion that may result. But prisoners may want to cause confusion, and in any event do not pay the same price as a free person who, having changed his name, must inform his friends and business acquaintances and get a new driver's license, credit cards, and so on. The plaintiff in Salahuddin v. Coughlin, 591 F.Supp. 353, 358-59 (S.D.N.Y.1984), had two Moslem names (as well as three Christian ones), and "professed contemplation of name changes in the future, which he wants to be able to accomplish at will." Id. at 359. So we can imagine a situation where when roll is called one morning Fields refuses to answer his name because last night he changed it to Muhammad; the next day he changes it to Azeez, and the next back to Fields. How are the authorities to keep track of prisoners in these circumstances?

No doubt our hypothetical case would represent an abuse of the common law right to change one's name. Cf. Chaney v. Civil Service Comm'n, 82 Ill.2d 289, 45 Ill.Dec. 146, 412 N.E.2d 497 (1980). But the boundaries of the concept of abusing the common law right to change one's name are obscure, and we do not think it can be said as a matter of federal constitutional law that the common law fixes the boundaries for prison officials alleged to have curtailed the federal rights of inmates. If perchance the prison authorities are violating Muhammad's common law rights, the remedy is a proceeding in Illinois court under Illinois law; an error of state law is not a denial of federal due process. Lynk v. LaPorte Superior Court No. 2, 789 F.2d 554, 564 (7th Cir.1986).

To our suggestion...