Phillip Littler v. Amber Wallace

NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION

To be cited only in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

Chicago, Illinois 60604

Submitted March 4, 2020 *

Decided March 5, 2020

Before

DIANE S. SYKES, Circuit Judge

DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge

MICHAEL Y. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge

No. 19-2305

PHILLIP LITTLER, Appeal from the United States District

Plaintiff-Appellant, Court for the Southern District of Indiana,

Terre Haute Division.

v. No. 2:16-cv-175-WTL-DLP

AMBER WALLACE, William T. Lawrence,

Defendant-Appellee. Judge.

ORDER

After the prison mailroom supervisor destroyed a letter from his cousin under a

policy restricting communication between current and former inmates, Phillip Littler

sued her for enforcing an unconstitutional policy. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983. His complaint

included several other claims and defendants, but only his First Amendment challenge

to the policy proceeded to a bench trial. The district judge concluded that the prison’s

*

We have agreed to decide the case without oral argument because the briefs and

record adequately present the facts and legal arguments, and oral argument would not

significantly aid the court. FED. R. APP. P. 34(a)(2)(C).

No. 19-2305 Page 2

policy was constitutional because it was related to a legitimate penological interest.

Littler appeals, challenging that determination and several pre-trial rulings. We affirm.

Littler is a state prisoner at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in Indiana. In

March 2015, the prison’s mailroom received a letter addressed to him from his cousin.

Staff inspected the letter, in which Littler’s cousin stated that he was on probation. The

Indiana Department of Correction has a policy barring communications between

current inmates and other offenders, including former Indiana prisoners on probation,

without prior approval (which can be requested using a form). See IND. DEP’T OF CORR.

MANUAL OF POL’Y & PROC., No. 02-01-103(V) (Apr. 15, 2014). Littler’s cousin was on

county probation but had not served time in an Indiana state prison. Believing that the

policy applied to the letter, however, staff confiscated it when they found no record that

Littler had been granted approval to communicate with his cousin.

Following Department policy, mailroom staff notified Littler that they had

confiscated his letter and that he could challenge the confiscation through the prison’s

administrative process. Id. No. 02-01-103(XIII). Littler did so, but his grievance and

appeals were denied. Under the policy, if a grievance specialist determines that the

confiscation of any mail is legitimate, staff may dispose of it if the inmate to whom it is

addressed does not advise them within 15 days where else to direct the mail. Id. No. 02-

01-103(XX). Littler failed to advise mailroom staff how he wanted the letter handled,

and the supervisor, Jeanne Watkins, later notified him that she had destroyed it.

Littler then sued Watkins, as well as a commissioner of the Indiana Department

of Correction, Bruce Lemmon, and the prison’s superintendent Richard Brown. He

sought damages, a declaration that the policy is unconstitutional, and an injunction

preventing its enforcement. The district court screened the complaint under 28 U.S.C.

§ 1915A and permitted Littler to proceed on a First Amendment claim against Watkins

in both her individual and official capacities, but it dismissed the claims against

Lemmon and Brown because there were no allegations that they were personally

involved in Littler’s injury. The district court also did not allow Littler to proceed on a

claim that the destruction of the letter was an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth

Amendment. Nor did it permit Littler to amend his complaint to add a due-process

claim, ruling that Indiana’s Tort Claims Act provides sufficient remedies.

At the close of discovery, the defendants moved for summary judgment. The

district court denied their motion. Though it could imagine several reasons why the

Department of Correction would want to restrict mail between current and former

inmates, the court explained, the prison had not presented evidence showing its policy

No. 19-2305 Page 3

was logically related to legitimate security concerns. Later, after ordering additional

briefing on the scope of Watkins’s liability, the court ruled that Watkins was entitled to

qualified immunity with respect to the damages claim because destroying the letter

under the policy did not violate any clearly established constitutional right. That left

only Littler’s First Amendment claim for declaratory and injunctive relief against

Watkins in her official capacity. (Because a suit against a state official in her official

capacity is effectively a suit against the state entity, Will v. Michigan Dep't of State Police,

491 U.S. 58, 71 (1989), we refer to it in that vein going forward.)

At trial, Littler testified that the policy prevented him from communicating with

his cousin and a prospective love interest who was a former Indiana prisoner on work

release. He admitted that he had not asked for permission to exchange letters with his

cousin or anyone else, and he had not tried to put his cousin on his phone list. Asking

for permission to communicate with these individuals would be futile, he thought,

because he was housed in a restricted unit. (Approvals to send and receive letters from

other offenders are suspended if an inmate is placed on restricted status. See IND. DEP’T

OF CORR. MANUAL OF POL’Y & PROC., No. 02-01-103(V).) And his love interest had balked

at having to give her contact information to the prison to communicate with him.

Amber Wallace, who had replaced Watkins as mailroom supervisor and was

substituted in her place, see FED. R. CIV. P. 25(d), testified about how the mailroom

operates. On any given day it receives up to a thousand letters. Four mailroom staff

members screen incoming mail for safety risks and contraband, such as drugs and mail

from other offenders, that threaten prison security. Not all security threats are

immediately obvious. Offender-to-offender communications present a threat to prison

security, Wallace testified, because offenders often write in codes that are difficult for

staff to identify and understand. Staff therefore automatically confiscate this type of

correspondence. She had recognized coded messages in at least three pieces of offender-

to-offender mail that she personally handled. She was not able to find any record of

Littler asking for permission to communicate with restricted individuals.

At the close of trial, the district court entered findings of fact and conclusions of

law. It ruled that, though the policy implicated Littler’s First Amendment rights, it was

not unconstitutional because the prison had presented sufficient evidence that the

policy was reasonably related to its interest in preserving prison security. Littler could

still communicate with other offenders under the policy (with advance permission).

And accepting the communications would likely drain prison resources by increasing

the amount of mail to be individually inspected by the prison staff. Littler appealed.

No. 19-2305 Page 4

We begin with Littler’s argument that the prison’s policy violates the First

Amendment. Prisoners have a protected First Amendment interest in receiving mail.

See Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 84 (1987); Kaufman v. McCaughtry, 419 F.3d 678, 685

(7th Cir. 2005). Prison regulations that restrict this interest are nevertheless valid if they

relate reasonably to a legitimate penological interest. Turner, 482 U.S. at 89–90; Munson

v. Gaetz, 673 F.3d 630, 633 (7th Cir. 2012). To determine reasonableness, we consider

whether there is a valid, rational connection between the prison’s objective and the

regulation, whether alternative means of exercising the right are available, whether

accommodating the asserted right unduly impacts the prison’s resources, and whether

obvious, easy alternatives exist to accommodate the prisoner’s rights. Turner, 482 U.S.

at 89–90; Munson, 673 F.3d at 633.

Littler argues the policy is not reasonably related to a legitimate penological

interest because communication with probationers does not present the same degree of

security risks as communication between current inmates. He also contends that it is

arbitrary and punitive because prison officials can deny approval, and approvals are

rescinded if inmates are placed on restricted status. But even if we assume (Littler

presented no evidence of this theory) that communications with probationers present

less risk than with other prisoners, Littler must overcome the substantial discretion

granted to prison officials in determining “appropriate means of furthering penological

interests.” Turner, 482 U.S. at 89; Koger v. Dart, No. 19-2892, slip op. at 3–4 (7th Cir.

Feb. 25, 2020); see also Overton v. Bazzetta, 539 U.S. 126, 132 (2003) (the burden “is not on

the State to prove the validity of prison regulations but on the prisoner to disprove it”).

Here, the prison explained that the regulation furthers prison security because

staff struggle to identify coded language used by current and former inmates.

See Turner, 482 U.S. at 93. Prison security is a sufficiently important government interest

to justify limitations on First Amendment rights. See Rowe v. Shake, 196 F.3d 778, 782

(7th Cir. 1999). And placing restrictions on mail prone to coded language logically

relates to that goal and is not an “exaggerated response.” See Turner, 482 U.S. at 90–91,

93 (upholding restriction on offender-to-offender mail in part because “prisoners could

easily write in jargon or codes to prevent detection”). Requiring the four-person

mailroom staff to read all prisoner-to-prisoner mail for coded messages—rather than

confiscating them as a class—could fail to achieve the same goal because, as Wallace

explained, the use of coded language is not always obvious. The policy leaves open

alternative means of communication: inmates may request permission to communicate

with restricted individuals and challenge the confiscation of mail through the grievance

system; subject to some restrictions, they may also communicate with former inmates

No. 19-2305 Page 5

over the telephone. See IND. DEP’T OF CORR. MANUAL OF POL’Y & PROC., No. 02-01-105.

That the prison may deny an inmate’s request for permission to communicate with

another offender—if, for example, an inmate is on restricted status for investigatory

reasons or a particular correspondent poses an intolerable risk—does not make these

alternative means categorically insufficient. The policy is meant to intercept a type of

mail that the prison has determined poses the most risk to prison security. It therefore

survives scrutiny under the Turner test.

We turn now to Littler’s challenges to the district court’s pre-trial rulings. Littler

insists that the district court should have allowed his claim for damages against

Watkins for confiscating and destroying his letter. But qualified immunity shields

prison officials from liability when their conduct does not violate clearly established

rights. See Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231 (2009); Van den Bosch v. Raemisch,

658 F.3d 778, 786–87 (7th Cir. 2011). And there is no clearly established First

Amendment right for prisoners to read unregulated mail from other offenders. We have

previously signaled that “[t]he right of a prison inmate to read the mail he receives,

provided that his reading it would not infringe the prison’s legitimate interests, is … clearly

established.” Williams v. Hansen, 837 F.3d 809, 811 (7th Cir. 2016) (emphasis added).

Here, whether preventing inmates from reading mail from other offenders was justified

by a legitimate interest was a disputed issue for trial. From cases like Turner, in which

courts have upheld policies restricting correspondence among prisoners, 482 U.S. at 93,

Watkins could not have known that confiscating mail from someone who appeared to

be an Indiana probationer under a policy restricting inmate correspondence clearly

violated the First Amendment. And as our discussion of the policy’s constitutionality

demonstrates, the issue does not obviously resolve in Littler’s favor. Therefore, the

district court properly concluded that Watkins had qualified immunity with respect to

his claim for damages.

Littler further maintains, perhaps just to preserve the argument for further

review, that the district court erred in dismissing his Fourth Amendment claim because

destroying his letter was an arbitrary and unconstitutional seizure. As he appears to

concede, that argument is foreclosed by precedent. See e.g., Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S.

517, 525–27 (1984); United States v. Whalen, 940 F.2d 1027, 1034–35 (7th Cir. 1991).

Finally, Littler insists that the district court abused its discretion when it declined

to allow him to amend his complaint to include a due process claim because, he urges,

the Indiana Tort Claims Act is not an adequate post-deprivation remedy for the

destruction of personal property by prison officials. We have suggested as much,

No. 19-2305 Page 6

see Belcher v. Norton, 497 F.3d 742 (7th Cir. 2007), but the point is immaterial here. The

policy itself appears to provide a remedy. Through procedures for requesting approval

to communicate with other offenders and appealing the confiscation of mail, it provides

notice and opportunity to be heard both before and after mail is confiscated. And mail

is destroyed only if inmates do not make their own arrangements for it. The evidence at

trial shows that Littler did not make full use of these procedures: he did not ask for

advance permission to communicate with anyone, and he failed to direct the staff to

send the letter elsewhere. On this record, he cannot argue that a different procedure

would have substantially decreased the risk of an erroneous deprivation of property.

We have considered Littler’s other claims, and none has merit.

AFFIRMED