On April 11, 2014, Prison Legal News (PLN), a non-profit publication of the Human Rights Defense Center, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington under 42 U.S.C. §1983 against Lewis County. The complaint alleged that Lewis County's mail policy, which restricted incoming and outgoing correspondence at the county jail to postcards only, violated PLN's First Amendment rights. Additionally, PLN alleged that the jail's failure to provide notice to the sender when mail was censored or rejected violated the Fourteenth Amendment due process rights of senders and prisoners. The plaintiffs asked the Court to order the county to cease practicing the postcard-only rule and to require that the jail provide prisoners notice of and opportunity to appeal decisions to reject personal mail.

On September 10, 2014, the District Court (Magistrate Judge J. Richard Creatura) issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the jail from restricting mail to postcards only. The court ordered the jail to provide notices of rejection to prisoners and non-prisoner correspondents. It also ordered that all appeals be directed at an official other than the official who originally ordered the rejection of mail.

Just a few weeks later, the parties motioned for the court to convert the preliminary injunction to a permanent injunction with some modifications. On October 28, 2014, the District Court (Magistrate Judge Creatura) granted the parties stipulated motion. The permanent injunction requires the court to (1) permanently enjoin defendants from restricting mail to postcards only; (2) permanently enjoin defendants from rejecting mail to or from prisoners without providing notice to the prisoner; (3) permanently enjoin defendants from rejecting mail from non-prisoner correspondents without providing notice to the non-prisoner correspondent; and (4) permanently enjoin defendants to give notice to the non-prisoner correspondent addressee of rejected outgoing mail whenever Constitutionally required. The court retained jurisdiction to enforce the injunction for an unspecified amount of time.

On November 5, 2014, accepted the parties proposed order, the District Court (Magistrate Judge Creatura) dismissed with prejudice plaintiff’s claim for damages, attorneys’ fees, and costs. The case is closed.

Alison Rogers - 09/24/2014
Jake Parker - 05/17/2018


compress summary