Today's Daily Appellate Reports brings an interesting new case from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. According to the opinion in Clement v. California Department of Corrections, Pelican Bay State Prison adopted a policy in 2001 that prevented prisoners from receiving any mail that included copies of material downloaded from the Internet. Since prisoners are denied access to the Internet itself, this policy about the content of 'snail mail' denied them access to material that is available only on the Internet. The Ninth Circuit found that the prison's policy violated the prisoner's First Amendment rights and did not serve a legitimate penological objective. The opinion makes sense precisely because the prison's policy didn't. Opinion here in PDF.

This also means that California inmates can now read weblogs for the first time.