An inmate convicted on six counts of of possession of child pornography claims the federal prison system’s 300-minute-a-month limit on phone calls infringed on his ability to be involved in his children’s lives.
WASHINGTON — An inmate who claimed that the federal prison system’s 300-minute-a-month limit on phone calls infringed on his ability to be involved in his children’s lives should get a chance to present his case, an appeals court ruled.
The appeals court said Tiedemann should be allowed to amend his suit to name his current warden and present his claim that the phone limits violate his First and Fifth Amendment right to “familial association.” The court also said the Bureau of Prisons will need to show that there is a security reason for limiting inmates’ phone time and for refusing to grant Tiedemann’s request for an exception.
Hamm said that pressing a case “takes tenacity and probably a lot of homework in the law library” for inmates like Tiedemann, who originally filed his case on his own. But when he was transferred to federal prison, first in California and then in Tucson, he was subject to the systemwide 300-minutes-per-month rule, reducing his phone time with his kids to about 10 minutes a day. Tiedemann said that violated his constitutional right to familial association by limiting his ability to parent his children.
The district court said that Tiedemann’s claim was moot because the wardens he named no longer had authority over him, and it rejected his request to amend his suit, saying he had had “ample time to file an amended complaint” but failed to do so. “A prison transfer does not defeat jurisdiction where a prisoner’s injury stems from a systemwide policy,” said U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, who joined the circuit judges for the case and wrote the opinion.
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