PLN has filed its Opening Brief to the Eleventh Circuit. The brief was authored by former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, a partner at Washington, D.C.-based Bancroft PLLC. On appeal, Clement noted that Florida, “alone among the fifty States, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), and every county jail in the country, is violating Prison Legal News’s First Amendment rights by impounding every issue of its magazine based on the publication’s advertisements.” PLN’s journal is sent to prisons in all states and to federal facilities, including the federal supermax ADX prison in Florence, Colorado, without being censored due to its ad content. “There is simply no logical fit between the FDOC’s renewed censorial zeal and the current evidence that would justify its alone-in-the-nation censorship of a publication uniquely focused on the plights and rights of prisoners,” PLN argued in its appellate brief.
PLN is asking the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the district court’s judgment as to the First Amendment censorship claim, to affirm the court’s ruling as to the due process claim and to expand the latter to ensure PLN receives individualized notice when the FDOC censors issues of its monthly publication.
PLN has issued a Press Release to announce the filing of the brief.