1st Amendment Violation

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Joseph Miller v. Michael Downey, et al.

Case No.: 17-1507

Officials: FLAUM, ROVNER, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges.

Focus: 1^st Amendment Violation

Between 2012 and 2013, the Jerome Combs Detention Center in Kankakee, Illinois, prohibited inmates from receiving any newspapers. While awaiting trial on bank robbery charges, Joseph Miller’s family bought him a $279 subscription to the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin to help him with his case. Deeming the Law Bulletin a newspaper, jail officials precluded Miller from receiving it. Miller responded with a lawsuit challenging the jail’s prohibition and confiscation of the publication and seeking to recover the subscription fee. The district court construed the lawsuit as requiring it to answer, not the narrow question of whether Miller had a right to receive a legal publication like the Law Bulletin, but instead the broader question of whether the jail’s ban on all newspapers offended the First Amendment. In the end, the district court upheld the newspaper ban and awarded summary judgment to the defendant jail officials. Because the district court erred in reaching and resolving such a broad constitutional question—and the record was not fully developed as it pertains to the jail’s restriction on legal publications—we vacate the district court’s judgment and remand for further proceedings.

Vacated and Remanded

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Derek A Hawkins is trademark corporate counsel for Harley-Davidson. Hawkins oversees the prosecution and maintenance of the Harley-Davidson’s international trademark portfolio in emerging markets.