Seventh Circuit Lets BOP Restrict Access to Federal Register from Prison in Illinois
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held on July 30, 2024, that the First Amendment does not require the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to provide full, daily access to the Federal Register so that prisoners may comment on proposed rulemaking.
The Federal Register is the U.S. government’s daily publication of proposed rules, executive orders and other administrative documents. The Administrative Procedures Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. § 553, guarantees all citizens the right to submit timely public comments on proposed rules. But BOP law libraries do not contain the full, updated version of the Federal Register. Instead, agency policy requires the libraries to maintain only those “documents … pertaining to the Bureau and to the U.S. Parole Commission.” See: Bureau Program Statement 1315.07 (Nov. 5, 1999). This information, like most legal resources in BOP law libraries, is uploaded to an electronic bulletin board by staff and forwarded to computer terminals without internet access for prisoners to use.
In 2019, prisoner Robert Decker filed suit against several BOP officials, accusing them of violating APA by failing to upload the full Federal Register to the electronic bulletin board, which he alleged also violated his rights under the First, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to receive information and petition the government while incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Marion, Illinois. BOP moved for summary judgment, which the federal court for the Southern District of Illinois granted. Decker appealed.
Applying the familiar framework for reviewing prison regulations set forth in Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987), the Seventh Circuit held that the BOP regulation denying prisoners access to the full, daily register was rationally related to legitimate penological goals. Although recognizing that most of Decker’s arguments were “well-taken” and that BOP unquestionably refuses to provide access to portions of the Federal Register that directly impact prisoners—such as regulations regarding inmate calling services—the Court nonetheless concluded that a ruling in the prisoner’s favor raised “a unique likelihood that this case would lead to a cascade of similar requests that would, in the aggregate, place an inordinate burden on the prison system.”
With that, the district court order dismissing Decker’s suit on summary judgment was affirmed. The prisoner was represented before the Court by North Carolina attorneys Hampton H. Bruton and Erik Zimmerman with Robinson, Bradshaw & Hinson, P.A. Chapel Hill, as well as Zachary A. Johnson and Attor G. Steadman with the firm’s office in Charlotte. See: Decker v. Sireveld, 109 F.4th 975 (7th Cir. 2024).