Hill v. Blackwell

• Decision Date: 10 October 1985
• Docket Number: No. 84-2258,84-2258
• Citation: 774 F.2d 338
• Parties: James HILL, a/k/a Amin Khatib Muhammad, Appellee, v. David BLACKWELL and Donald Wyrick, Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 338

774 F.2d 338

James HILL, a/k/a Amin Khatib Muhammad, Appellee, v. David BLACKWELL and Donald Wyrick, Appellants.

No. 84-2258.

United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.

Submitted April 11, 1985.

Decided Oct. 10, 1985.

Rosalynn Van Heest, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jefferson City, Mo., for appellants.

Christopher C. Harlan, Kansas City, Mo., for appellee.

Before ARNOLD and FAGG, Circuit Judges, and HARPER, ^* Senior District Judge.

FAGG, Circuit Judge.

James Hill, an inmate at the Missouri State Penitentiary, brought suit under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 claiming that a prison grooming regulation prohibiting the growing of beards by prison inmates violates his first amendment right to exercise freely his religion. The district court agreed with Hill and thus enjoined enforcement of the regulation against Hill and other similarly situated inmates. We reverse.

Facts

Hill is a member of the Muslim faith. The wearing of facial hair, including beards and moustaches, is a practice of the Muslim religion. A regulation promulgated by the Department of Corrections of the State of Missouri prohibits inmates in Missouri penal institutions, exclusive of certain minimum security facilities, from growing beards. The regulation provides:

(2) The wearing of sideburns and mustaches will be permitted. Sideburns may not extend lower than the bottom of the ear, and mustaches will be no wider than the mouth. As beards can dramatically alter the inmate's appearance and, thereby, present serious identification problems, only inmates assigned to the State Correctional Pre-Release Center, Ka-Cee Honor Center, St. Mary's Honor Center, or a halfway house program will be permitted to grow beards. All inmates reassigned from any of these programs will be expected to shave their beard[s] and comply in all other respects with the grooming policy in effect at the institution to which they are reassigned.

After filing two grievances with the prison board in which Hill requested and was denied an exemption from the regulation on religious grounds, Hill filed this suit in district court. After an evidentiary hearing, the district court determined that Hill sincerely believed in the Muslim faith and that the "grooming regulation prohibiting beards is not reasonably and substantially justified by considerations of prison security and is, therefore, violative of the First Amendment's guarantees of religious freedom." Further, the district court stated that "[t]o the extent that the defendants have introduced evidence that the absence of the regulation would create a potential security risk, the Court concludes that there is substantial evidence that the defendants' claims of security risk are exaggerated."

On appeal, David Blackwell, director of the Missouri Department of Corrections, Division of Adult Institutions, and Donald Wyrick, warden of the Missouri State Penitentiary, defendants below, do not dispute that Hill's desire to grow a beard is founded upon a sincerely held religious belief. See Quaring v. Peterson, 728 F.2d 1121 1123 (8th Cir.1984), aff'd by an equally divided Court sub nom. Jensen v. Quaring, --- U.S. ----, 105 S.Ct. 3492, 86 L.Ed.2d 383 (1985). Rather, Blackwell and Wyrick maintain that the beard regulation is reasonably justified by legitimate concerns for prison security, and further that the prison officials' response to their legitimate concerns for prison security is not exaggerated. Based upon the record evidence, we agree with Blackwell's and Wyrick's contentions.

Applicable Law

It can no longer be questioned that "convicted prisoners do not forfeit all constitutional protections by reason of their conviction and confinement in prison." Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 545, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 1877, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979). "Reasonable opportunities must be afforded to all prisoners to exercise the religious freedom guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments without fear of penalty." Cruz v. Beto, 405 U.S. 319, 322 n. 2, 92 S.Ct. 1079, 1081 n. 2, 31 L.Ed.2d 263 (1972) (per curiam). "The fact of confinement and the needs of the penal institutions [do, however,] impose limitations on [the exercise of] constitutional rights, including those derived from the First Amendment, which are implicit in incarceration." Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Union, 433 U.S. 119, 125, 97 S.Ct. 2532, 2537, 53 L.Ed.2d 629 (1977). "In sum, there must be [a] mutual accommodation between institutional needs and objectives and the provisions of the Constitution that are of general application." Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 556, 94 S.Ct. 2963, 2974, 41 L.Ed.2d 935 (1974).

The Supreme Court has considered a number of cases involving a conflict between constitutional rights and legitimate objectives of penal institutions. In Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 404-05, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 1807, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1974), the Court recognized

that the problems of prisons in America are complex and intractable, and, more to the point, they are not readily susceptible of resolution by decree. Most require expertise, comprehensive planning, and the commitment of resources, all of which are peculiarly within the province of the legislative and executive branches of government. * * * [W]here state penal institutions are involved, federal courts have a further reason for deference to the appropriate prison authorities.

At issue in Martinez was the constitutionality of a regulation concerning the censorship of prison inmates' mail. Contrary to the assumption of the parties involved, the Court concluded that the case did not require "an assessment of the extent to which prisoners may claim First Amendment freedoms." Id. at 408, 94 S.Ct. at 1809. Noting "that the First Amendment liberties of free citizens are implicated in censorship of prisoner mail," the Court looked "not to cases involving questions of 'prisoners' rights,' but to decisions of [the] Court dealing with the general problem of incidental restrictions on First Amendment liberties imposed in furtherance of legitimate governmental activities." Id. at 409, 94 S.Ct. at 1809. The Court then determined that censorship of prisoner mail is justifiable if "[f]irst, the regulation or practice in question * * * further[s] an important or substantial governmental interest unrelated to the suppression of expression" and "[s]econd, the limitation of First Amendment freedoms [is] no greater than is necessary or essential to the protection of the particular governmental interest involved." Id. at 413, 94 S.Ct. at 1811.

The same year, in Pell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. 817, 94 S.Ct. 2827, 41 L.Ed.2d 495 (1974), the Court considered a challenge to a prison regulation prohibiting face to face interviews between press representatives and individual inmates whom the press specifically name and request to interview. In response to the prisoners' claim that the regulation violated their first amendment rights to free speech, the Court noted that "[i]n the First Amendment context * * * a prison inmate retains those First Amendment rights that are not inconsistent with his status as a prisoner or with the legitimate penological objectives of the corrections system." Id. at 822, 94 S.Ct. at 2804. The Court recognized that "central to all other [penological objectives] is the institutional consideration of internal security within the corrections facilities themselves." Id. at 823, 94 S.Ct. at 2804. The Court then stated that considerations of institutional security "are peculiarly within the province and professional expertise of corrections officials, and, in the absence of substantial evidence in the record to indicate the officials have exaggerated the response to these considerations, courts should ordinarily defer to their expert judgment in such matters." Id. at 827, 94 S.Ct. at 2806.

Following Pell, in Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Union, 433 U.S. 119, 97 S.Ct. 2532, 53 L.Ed.2d 629 (1977), the Court was faced with a claim by prison inmates that a prison regulation was infringing upon their first amendment rights to free speech, association, and assembly. Recognizing the difficulties inherent in running a penal institution, the Court again stressed the need to afford the decisions of prison officials "wide-ranging deference." Id. at 126, 97 S.Ct. at 2538.

After reiterating the testimony of prison officials supporting the need for the regulation, the Court in Jones noted that the district court had not rejected the prison officials' beliefs as fanciful or erroneous. Id. at 127, 97 S.Ct. at 2538. Rather, the Court noted, the district court determined that the beliefs were sincerely held and were arguably correct. Id. The Court then concluded that "[w]ithout a showing that [the] beliefs [of the prison officials as to the need for the regulation] were unreasonable, it was error for the District Court to conclude that [the prison officials] needed to show more." Id. at 127-28, 97 S.Ct. at 2538-39. Further, "the burden was not on [the prison officials] to show affirmatively that the [activity controlled by the regulation] would be 'detrimental to proper penological objectives' or would constitute a 'present danger to security and order.' " Id. (quoting Jones, 409 F.Supp. 937, 944-45 (E.D.N.C.1976) ). Rather, " '[s]uch considerations are peculiarly within the province and professional expertise of corrections officials, and, in the absence of substantial evidence in the record to indicate that the officials have exaggerated their response to these considerations, courts should ordinarily defer to their expert judgment in such matters.' " Id. 433 U.S. at 128, 97 S.Ct. at 2539 (quoting Pell, 417 U.S. at 827, 94 S.Ct. at 2806).

In Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979), the Court again repeated a number of its previous pronouncements respecting resolution of conflicts between legitimate penological objectives and constitutional rights. The Court stressed the importance of...