Justices to Hear Prison Case Alito Ruled On

Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. is having an effect on the Supreme Court before the Senate even takes up his nomination.

The justices agreed Monday to hear a Pennsylvania prison officials’ appeal -- based on a dissent by Alito -- challenging a ruling that said even the most disruptive and dangerous prison inmates were entitled to receive newspapers and magazines.

The case, to be heard in the spring, is the latest that seeks to draw a line between the rights of prisoners and the rules set by prison authorities. In the last two decades, the high court has said judges who are faced with such cases generally should defer to the judgment of prison managers.

The dispute involves about 40 inmates held in the “long-term segregation unit” of a state prison near Pittsburgh. Under the state’s policy, inmates who break the rules lose privileges, such as watching television or using tobacco. Those who end up in the unit are “the most incorrigible ... and have demonstrated the most behavior conflicts,” the state said.

For the first 90 days in the special unit, inmates are denied all reading material, except for legal papers and religious materials. The inmates sued to challenge the rule.

“Precluding them from receiving information from periodicals about current political, social and other activities outside the prison walls ... offends the free speech component of the 1st Amendment,” their lawyer said.

A federal judge upheld the prison policy, but the issue was appealed to a three-judge panel of the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.

Two judges agreed with the inmates and struck down the prison policy as unconstitutional. They reasoned that although prison officials could enforce rules involving safety or security, barring newspapers or magazines did not promote security behind bars.

Alito dissented and called the majority’s reasoning unsound. Prison authorities may take away privileges from inmates who misbehave, he wrote.

“These regulations are reasonably related to the legitimate penological goal of curbing prison misconduct,” Alito wrote. For that reason, they should be upheld, he added.

State officials urged the Supreme Court to hear the case of Beard vs. Banks to overturn the lower court, and the justices said they would take it up.

Also on Monday, the court said it would hear a California case that could make it somewhat harder for inmates to file lawsuits in court over prison grievances.

In 1995, Congress said inmates could not sue in court unless their complaints had been heard and acted upon by a prison grievance board.

Viet Mike Ngo, who is serving a life term for murder, had his grievance turned away because he had not filed within two weeks of the incident that prompted it, as the rules required.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently ruled that he could sue in federal court because he had tried and failed to have his complaint heard by the grievance board.

California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that a prisoner’s failure to take advantage of the grievance process should not give him a ticket to go to federal court. The justices agreed to hear the case, Woodford vs. Ngo, in the spring.

Finally, the court disappointed civil rights activists when it turned away a legal challenge to Florida’s lifetime ban on voting for convicted felons, a law that bars more than 1 in 10 black adults in Florida from voting.

The Constitution allows states to prohibit criminals from voting, and 48 states have such restrictions. But civil rights activists said the prohibitions had a discriminatory effect on blacks and should be struck down under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Florida’s ban is particularly strict, since it extends to felons who have served their prison terms and been released. It gained national attention five years ago after the close presidential election.

In the year before the election, state officials had removed the names of thousands of felons from the voting rolls; some of those removed merely had the same name as a convicted felon but had committed no crime.

Nonetheless, the justices -- without comment -- turned away a challenge in the case of Johnson vs. Bush. There are, however, several other similar challenges being heard in lower courts.

“The court has not only missed an opportunity to right a great historic injustice, it has shut the courthouse door in the face of hundreds of thousands of disenfranchised citizens,” said Catherine Weiss, associate counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, which had challenged Florida’s policy.