Prisoner rights; Jail mail policy; Prison Legal News v. Bezotte (Unpub. ED MI); “Legal mail”; Likelihood of success on the merits of the First Amendment claim; Kensu v. Haigh; Wolff v. McDonnell; Jones v. Caruso; Sallier v. Brooks; Muhammad v. Pitcher; Turner v. Safley; Likelihood of success on the merits of the Fourteenth Amendment claim; Martin v. Kelley; Procunier v. Martinez

[This appeal was from the ED-MI.] Where the defendant-Livingston County’s Jail did not deliver the plaintiff-ACLU’s letters to the inmates, or inform the inmates that the mail was not delivered, the court affirmed the district court’s preliminary injunction ordering the Jail to deliver the letters. The ACLU sent the inmates sealed letters marked “Legal Mail,” containing information regarding the jail’s “postcard policy,” which limited sealed envelopes to “legal mail.” The ACLU argued that the Jail violated the First and Fourteenth Amendment “by failing to deliver the letters and by failing to notify the ACLU or the inmates about the non-delivery.” The Jail argued against the injunction, claiming that “legal mail does not include mail from an attorney if the mail neither contains privileged content nor implicates an attorney-client relationship.” To determine whether the ACLU was likely to succeed on the merits of its First Amendment claim, the court considered, and rejected, the Jail’s argument that the letters did not involve an “ongoing legal matter” because the ACLU did not have an existing attorney-client relationship with any of the inmate addressees and thus, it “was not obligated to treat the letters as ‘legal mail’ under its mail intake policy.” The court noted that it has “consistently held that ‘the opening of “legal mail” should generally be in the inmate’s presence.’” Also, the court “has never suggested that ‘legal mail’ requires an existing attorney-client relationship.” It noted that “both attorneys and inmates have a strong interest in keeping communications relating to the initial investigative stages of a legal matter” (the Jail’s “postcard policy”) confidential. The Jail’s policies did not “bear a rational connection to a legitimate interest” – rather, they were “arbitrary, untenable, and unnecessarily impinge[d] on important First Amendment rights.” Further, because the letters were “legal mail,” the ACLU was “also likely to succeed on its Fourteenth Amendment claim.”