In the case of West v. Frank, decided on March 25, 2005 by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, the court dismissed a prisoner’s complaint that a prison policy prohibiting mail delivery of information printed from the Internet was unconstitutional. The court held that the issue became moot after the policy was amended to allow delivery of such materials.
Plaintiff, an inmate in a Wisconsin prison, suffered from liver disease and desired information about the liver transplant process. After he was unable to acquire such information from the prison’s medical staff, plaintiff asked family members to send him information through the mail. On three occasions, family members printed out information from medical websites and sent them through the mail to the plaintiff. Prison officials did not deliver the materials to the plaintiff, however, citing the prison’s policy which prohibited inmates from receiving printed Internet materials.
Plaintiff brought a civil rights action against various prison officials alleging that the policy violated his First Amendment rights. At the summary judgment stage, the matter was dismissed. The court found that the prison’s change in policy to allow inmates to receive printed materials on the Internet made the First Amendment question moot. The parties to the action no longer had “an interest in the outcome that the law recognize[d] as actionable.” Further, it was “absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior [of the prison] could not reasonably be expected to recur.”
West v. Frank, 2005 WL 701703 (W.D. Wis., March 25, 2005).