On February 19, 2019, a man serving a life sentence in a Florida prison filed this putative class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida. The Plaintiff sued the Secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections under 42 U.S.C. §1983 and the Declaratory Judgment Act. The case was ultimately assigned to Judge Robert L. Hinkle. The Plaintiff, represented by the Social Justice Law Collective and the Florida Justice Institute, sought a declaration that the Defendant had violated the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. He also sought a preliminary and permanent injunction that would restore the Plaintiff’s access while in prison to digital media files that he had previously purchased.

Specifically, the Plaintiff claimed that the Defendant violated the Plaintiff’s constitutional rights when they switched from the Digital Music Player Program to the current Multimedia Tablet Program without allowing inmates to retain their previously purchased digital media players or digital media in prison. The Defendant implemented the Digital Music Player Program in 2011 in order to provide a secure method by which prisoners could browse, select, purchase, and download digital content to MP3/MP4 players made explicitly for use by inmates in a correctional setting. Advertisements to inmates emphasized that once they purchased media, they would always own it and could delete and re-order digital media that they had purchased from a cloud-based library at no additional cost.

In 2017, the Defendant terminated its contract with the Digital Music Player Program vendor, entered into a new contract with a competing vendor, and transitioned to the Multimedia Tablet Program. Under the new program, inmates were required to purchase a new multimedia device and were required to surrender their previous digital media players, along with all the digital content they had purchased for the previous devices. Inmates had the option of sending the player/files to someone outside the prison at an additional cost, but they could no longer access the media files they had purchased while in prison. Although inmates who had participated in the Digital Music Player Program received discounts on the new program, they did not receive any other form of compensation for the taking of their digital media players and files.

Because inmates had purchased the devices and files specifically to use while in prison, the Plaintiff claimed that the Defendant’s transition to the Multimedia Tablet Program amounted to an unconstitutional taking of private property (particularly for inmates serving a life sentence who would not benefit from sending the device to family or friends outside the prison). The Plaintiff also claimed that the Defendant’s transition to the new program violated the Plaintiffs’ substantive Due Process rights; he claimed that the transition was implemented in the Defendant’s legislative capacity, was arbitrary and capricious, and had no rational basis.

The Plaintiff sought to represent a class defined as “All Florida Department of Corrections prisoners whose digital media files were taken, or will be taken, pursuant to the Multimedia Tablet Program.” As of April 2019, the Defendant has not filed an answer to his complaint, and the Court has not addressed the class certification or reached the merits of the case.

Sara Stearns - 04/05/2019


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