District Court

In 1981, they filed a lawsuit in the Western District of Missouri challenging the constitutionality of the restrictions on inmate mail, marriage, and visitation.^[5] In March 1982, during a preliminary injunction hearing, Safley's attorney Floyd Finch suggested to the Judge, Howard Sachs, that Safley and Watson could get married right then and there in court. Sachs allowed it over the objection of the state's attorney, seeing "no 'substantial state interest' in preventing it," and the newlyweds were allowed to sit together for 10 minutes.^[5]

This rendered their individual claim about the marriage restriction moot, but the case was certified as a class action and continued.^[5][7] A five-day trial was held in February 1984, and in May 1984 a ruling was issued that overturned the restrictions on mail and marriage, but left the visitation rule intact. As visitation was not nearly as important a right as the rights of marriage and free speech, the visitation rule was upheld "as a matter of legitimate discretion."^[6]

On the other hand, Judge Sachs' ruling applied strict scrutiny to the mail and marriage rules. The rationale offered by MODOC witnesses for the mail rule was discouraging the formation of inmate gangs, and preventing coordination of riots, escapes, etc.^[8] Sachs noted that in Procunier v. Martinez^[9] the Supreme Court had refrained from crafting a specific standard for mail between inmates, but after discussing various other opinions by appellate courts, he ruled that the mail regulations were "unnecessarily sweeping", and were therefore unconstitutional.^[6]

For the marriage rule, he relied on cases such as Zablocki v. Redhail and Loving v. Virginia that held marriage to be a fundamental human right.^[6] In his findings of fact, the judge found that the superintendent, out of an apparent "protective attitude", denied permission for female inmates to marry except where there was a birth or a pregnancy.^[6] Even though incarceration came with the loss of certain rights and freedoms, Sachs wrote,

. . . defendants have no right to have the last word on a personal decision of this import. Even inmates have the right to make their own mistakes.

— Safley v. Turner, 586 F. Supp. at 595 (W.D. Mo. 1984)

Court of Appeals

MODOC appealed the ruling to a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that the trial court was wrong about the appropriate standard of review, and was clearly erroneous in its finding of fact.^[8] The Court disagreed, and affirmed the rulings of the trial court. It spent very little time discussing the "clearly erroneous" argument, simply noting that after reviewing the "entire record," they found "substantial evidence to support each finding of fact."^[8]

With respect to the mail rule, MODOC argued that that plaintiffs' status as inmates meant that the regulation should be review under a rational basis standard, rather than strict scrutiny. MODOC compared their rule to other prison rules which had been upheld, but the Court distinguished them as a "time, place, or manner" rules (as with Pell v. Procunier^[10] and Bell v. Wolfish,^[11] etc.), or as barely affecting freedom of speech (as with Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union^[12]).^[8] In contrast, an 8th Circuit case, Gregory v. Auger,^[13] had treated restriction on inmate mail as "a serious infringement of First Amendment liberties."^[8] As this case squarely dealt with speech, and finding no precedent in either Supreme Court or 8th Circuit caselaw to support a lower standard of review for prison rules on free speech, the Court upheld the application of strict scrutiny and the trial court's finding that the rule was unconstitutional.^[8]

In considering the marriage rule, the Court noted testimony from Superintendent Turner that, even before the new rule in 1983, "he believed he had the inherent power to deny permission [to marry] by virtue of Missouri statutes 'which allow me to control my institution.'"^[8] MODOC also argued that they had an interest in preventing "love triangles", which could lead to fights.^[8] The substance of MODOC's legal argument was again comparison to restrictions that had been upheld, and an argument that a lower level of scrutiny was appropriate. The Court found, however, that the other examples still left alternative ways for prisoners to exercise their rights, but "[h]ere, in contrast, both the old marriage rule as it was applied by Superintendent Turner and the 1983 rule on its face absolutely prevent those inmates denied permission from getting married."^[8] As the right to marriage was a "well settled" fundamental right, the Court again affirmed the lower court's reasoning and ultimate verdict.^[8]

The Turner test

Writing for a five-justice majority, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor began by examining the precedent set by Procunier v. Martinez, and determining the appropriate level of scrutiny for judicial review of prison regulations. The Court in Martinez had stated, ". . .federal courts must take cognizance of the valid constitutional claims of prison inmates," but also said that "courts are ill equipped to deal with the increasingly urgent problems of prison administration and reform."^[1] Thus, there were competing interests of justice, and O'Connor argued that courts should tread carefully:

Running a prison is an inordinately difficult undertaking that requires expertise, planning, and the commitment of resources, all of which are peculiarly within the province of the legislative and executive branches of government. Prison administration is, moreover, a task that has been committed to the responsibility of those branches, and separation of powers concerns counsel a policy of judicial restraint.

— Turner v. Safley, 482 US at 85 (1987) (Justice O'Connor, writing for the majority)

O'Connor wrote that Martinez had not actually formulated a standard of review, and the lower courts had been incorrect to interpret it as imposing strict scrutiny in this case.^[1] Rather, Martinez had imposed strict scrutiny in a situation where inmate mail had been censored based on its content (mail was censored for statements that "unduly complain," "magnify grievances," or express "inflammatory political, racial, religious or other views"), and where the rights of non-inmates were also implicated.^[1] Whereas content-based regulation of speech by the general public was an easy case where strict scrutiny should be applied, the present case called for a new standard to be formulated.

Thus the Court formulated such a standard, which would come to be known as the Turner test.^[1][2][3] A prison regulation that affected inmates' constitutional rights "is valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests," and reasonableness would be judged by four factors:

1. Whether there is a “valid, rational connection” between the regulation and the legitimate governmental interest used to justify it;
2. Whether there are alternative means for the prisoner to exercise the right at issue;
3. The impact that the desired accommodation will have on guards, other inmates, and prison resources (so-called "ripple effects"); and
4. The presence or absence of “ready alternatives," where the presence of ready alternatives make it more likely that a regulation is unreasonable, while the absence make it less likely that the regulation is unreasonable.

The test applied to the mail rule

Applying this test, the Court found MODOC's mail rule to be reasonable. It noted testimony by prison officials that gang activity was a growing problem in Missouri prisons, and that separating and isolating gang members was a well-known strategy.^[1] Renz was also sometimes used to put inmates in protective custody, which might be undermined by inmates communicating with other facilities. The first factor was thus satisfied. For the second factor, the Court said that inmates still had other forms of expression available, implicitly stating the ability to send and receive mail should not be considered in isolation.^[1] For the third factor, the Court felt that lower courts had underestimated the cost of allowing mail between inmates, especially because "exercise of the right affects the inmates and staff of more than one institution." The administrative cost of monitoring inmate communications, thwarting gangs, etc., would thus be increased across the state, not just at Renz.^[1] Finally, the Court stated that MODOC had "no obvious, easy alternatives to the policy [it] adopted. Other well-run prison systems, including the Federal Bureau of Prisons, have concluded that substantially similar restrictions on inmate correspondence were necessary to protect institutional order and security."^[1]

The test applied to the marriage rule

The Court began by affirming that inmates did indeed have a right to marry, a right previously recognized by cases such as Zablocki v. Redhail and Loving v. Virginia:

The right to marry, like many other rights, is subject to substantial restrictions as a result of incarceration. Many important attributes of marriage remain, however, after taking into account the limitations imposed by prison life. First, inmate marriages, like others, are expressions of emotional support and public commitment. These elements are an important and significant aspect of the marital relationship. In addition, many religions recognize marriage as having spiritual significance; for some inmates and their spouses, therefore, the commitment of marriage may be an exercise of religious faith as well as an expression of personal dedication. Third, most inmates eventually will be released by parole or commutation, and therefore most inmate marriages are formed in the expectation that they ultimately will be fully consummated. Finally, marital status often is a precondition to the receipt of government benefits (e. g., Social Security benefits), property rights (e. g., tenancy by the entirety, inheritance rights), and other, less tangible benefits (e. g., legitimation of children born out of wedlock). These incidents of marriage, like the religious and personal aspects of the marriage commitment, are unaffected by the fact of confinement or the pursuit of legitimate corrections goals.

— Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. at 96 (1987) (Justice O'Connor, writing for the majority)

The Court then reviewed the reasons MODOC had given for its marriage rule (that love triangles could lead to fights, or that many female inmates needed to "develop[e] skills of self-reliance" because they had a history of abuse or were too reliant on men), and found them to have no reasonable relationship to the actual rule. As for the love triangles, "surely . . . inmate rivalries are as likely to develop without a formal marriage ceremony as with one."^[1] The proposition that female inmates needed to be more self-reliant in no way explaining why women's requests were routinely denied and men's were routinely granted, and was inconsistent with testimony that there were no recorded problems with such marriages before the 1983 rule was adopted.^[1] Moreover, while the Court did not deem this fact to be necessary for its holding, it did observe that this "rehabilitation" rationale was based on a suspect classification, as it only applied only to women, in a system of "excessive paternalism."^[1]

The Court thus overturned the marriage rule, but upheld the mail rule on its face, and remanded the case back to the court of appeals for a determination of whether the mail rule was "arbitrary and capricious" as applied.^[1]