Thongvanh v. Thalacker

• Jurisdiction: United States

Thongvanh v. Thalacker

17 F.3d 256 (1994)

Facts

Iowa prison officials appealed the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa's ruling that prison regulations forbidding Thongvanh, a Laotian prisoner at Iowa Men's Reformatory (IMR), to correspond by mail in his native language violated his First Amendment rights to free speech. Prior to the District Court's decision, prison officials allowed Thongvanh to correspond by mail in Laotian with his parents and grandparents because they spoke no English. Though he spoke English poorly, Thongvanh was forced to correspond with all others by mail in English. Prison officials argued that, because security interests required the monitoring of prison mail and the fact that they had no Laotian interpreters on their staff, they could not monitor most of Thongvanh's mail if he was allowed to use his native language. At the same time, Iowa prison officials denied Thongvanh the right to correspond with others in his native language. However, officials at IMR allowed Spanish-speaking prisoners and a German-speaking prisoner the right to correspond by mail with anyone in their native language, because they had bilingual staff members who monitored such mail. Prison officials at IMR filed a motion for judgment as a matter of law, which the District Court denied.

Issue

Whether the prison officials' ban on allowing Thongvanh to correspond in Laotian by mail with all persons other than his parents and grandparents violates Thongvanh's First and Fourteenth Amendment rights to free speech and equal protection.

Holding by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's decision in part and reversed it in part, holding that although inconvenient for the IMR, the defendant's letters could have been translated at a refugee service center cost-free, and hence there was no reason the correspondence could not have been sent there. Moreover, the IMR failed to preserve the issue of the inmate's brother presenting a special security risk, and the verdict was not against the weight of the evidence.

Reason

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals weighed Thongvanh's First Amendment right to correspond by mail in his native language against IMR's security interests. In this case, the Circuit Court cited the standard set in Turner v. Safley. In Turner, the U.S. Supreme Court listed four factors that must be considered: (1) whether there is a valid rational connection between the...