CA2: Civilly committed non-legal mail screening and the Fourth Amendment

Plaintiff was civilly committed as a sex offender, and his 161 audio DVDs and CDs were seized to see if they were sexually explicit. It took months to do the review. Because there had been no prior case on it, the officials involved were entitled to qualified immunity. As for the merits, he has a right to the discs, but the institution has an institutional security need to evaluate them for sexually explicit materials. Ahlers v. Rabinowitz, 684 F.3d 53 (2d Cir. 2012).

This Circuit has not articulated the standard by which to analyze censorship of mail in the civil commitment context. “Restrictions on prisoners’ mail are justified only if they ‘further[] one or more of the substantial governmental interests of security, order, and rehabilitation … [and] must be no greater than is necessary or essential to the protection of the particular governmental interest involved.'” Davis v. Goord, 320 F.3d 346, 351 (2d Cir. 2003) (alterations in original) (quoting Washington, 782 F.2d at 1139). With regard to legal mail, “an isolated incident of mail tampering is usually insufficient to establish a constitutional violation. Rather, the inmate must show that prison officials ‘regularly and unjustifiably interfered with the incoming legal mail.'” Id. (citations omitted) (quoting Cancel v. Goord, No. 00 CIV 2042 LMM, 2001 WL 303713, at *6 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 29, 2001)). In the context of civil commitment, this formula is easily adapted. A patient must show regular and unjustifiable interference with incoming legal mail; the actions of facility staff in restricting civilly committed individuals’ access to legal mail are justified if they advance or protect the state’s interest in security, order, or treatment and the restrictions imposed are no greater than necessary to advance the governmental interest involved.