Hayes v. Idaho Correctional Center, No. 14-35078 (9th Cir. 2017)
Annotate this CasePlaintiff filed suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging four instances of prison employees delivering legal mail addressed to him that had been opened before delivery, and that prison and prison officials maintained a policy or custom of ignoring the improper handling of legal mail. The district court dismissed the complaint at the pre-screening stage pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1915A. The court recognized that prisoners have a protected First Amendment interest in having properly marked legal mail opened only in their presence; a plaintiff need not allege a longstanding practice of violating his First Amendment rights in order to state a claim for relief on a direct liability theory; a plaintiff need not show any actual injury beyond the free speech violation itself to state a constitutional claim; the district court properly dismissed two counts of alleged improper mail opening; the other two instances, however, do state a First Amendment claim; the district court erred in dismissing these two claims at the pre-screening stage; on remand, Defendant Burke may offer a legitimate penological reason for opening plaintiff's legal mail at either summary judgment or trial; and plaintiff waived any challenge to the dismissal of his policy-based claims. Accordingly, the court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded.
Court Description: Prisoner Civil Rights. The panel affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court’s dismissal of a complaint pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915A, and remanded in an action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 by a prisoner who alleged First Amendment claims arising from prison officials opening his legal mail outside his presence. The panel held that prisoners have a protected First Amendment interest in having properly marked legal mail opened only in their presence. The panel further held that a plaintiff need not allege a longstanding practice of violating his First Amendment rights in order to state a claim for relief on a direct liability theory, nor does a plaintiff need to show any actual injury beyond the free speech violation itself to state a constitutional violation. The panel held that the district court properly dismissed two other counts of alleged improper mail opening because plaintiff had not met his burden of plausibly alleging that the item opened outside his presence was legal mail, and because mail from the United States courts is not legal mail. The panel held that plaintiff waived any challenge to the dismissal of his policy-based claims by failing to discuss the claims in his opening brief. HAYES V. IDAHO CORRECTIONAL CENTER 3 Concurring in the judgment, Judge Bybee agreed with the conclusion that prisoners have a general First Amendment right to be present when legal mail related to a civil matter is inspected. He wrote separately to clarify that merely negligent conduct on the part of prison officials is not sufficient to state a claim.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.