Petition To Protect First Amendment Rights

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Author: errikka jordan

Started: June 28, 2009, 7:10:38 pm

Target: U.S. Senate, House of Judiciary Committee

Category: Civil & Human Rights

Supporters:

Goal:

50,000

Goal Progress:

Status

Active

The U.S. Supreme Court has effectively disenfranchised prisoners and their associates, including families and loved ones,of theprotections afforded by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.This means they no longer have any meaningful rights to correspondence and use of the mails, or even visitation.

The Supreme Court did this by creating a standard of judicial review that requires lower courts to simply adopt without question prison guards' explanations,regardless of how absurd or irrational,and to thereby deny claimed violations of First Amendment rights as a matter of course.

This petition seeks to persuade federal legislators in the United States to extend the judicial standard of review known as "strict scrutiny" to claimed violations of First Amendment rights in the prison context. This will make it more difficult for prison officials to abuse and retaliate against prisoners, their families, friends,and supporters, by restoring judicial review and oversight of those abuses involving First Amendment rights.

If successful, children of incarcerated parents in the United States might once again be permitted to visit with their imprisoned mothers and fathers, spouses might again correspond freely and maybe even touch one another, and prisoners might be able to publicize prisoner-abuse as a matter of right.

Has recent publicity surrounding Abu Ghraib and Guantanimo Bay taught the world anything, its that hidden and silenced prisoners are abused and tortured prisoners,and nowhere do prisoners suffer greater actual and risks of torture than within the United States prison system, where innocents are wrongfully convicted as a matter of course, political dissenters are tortured in "supermax" prisons and solitary comfinement for years and sometimes decades while concealed from view of the world, and physical and sexual abuse are rampant.

Help ensure prisoners and their associates in the United States are secured the right to report and expose the horrors of their wrongful convictions and torture through the ability to maintain meaningful human contact by adding your signature to this petition.

To learn more about how you can help join the fight against civil and human rights abuses in the United States, go to www.myspace.com/freemarkjordan.
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Added by: errikka jordan on June 28, 2009, 7:49:55 pm
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The U.S. Supreme Court has effectively disenfranchised prisoners and their associates, including families and loved ones,of theprotections afforded by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.This means they no longer have any meaningful rights to correspondence and use of the mails, or even visitation.

The Supreme Court did this by creating a standard of judicial review that requires lower courts to simply adopt without question prison guards' explanations,regardless of how absurd or irrational,and to thereby deny claimed violations of First Amendment rights as a matter of course.

This petition seeks to persuade federal legislators in the United States to extend the judicial standard of review known as "strict scrutiny" to claimed violations of First Amendment rights in the prison context. This will make it more difficult for prison officials to abuse and retaliate against prisoners, their families, friends,and supporters, by restoring judicial review and oversight of those abuses involving First Amendment rights.

If successful, children of incarcerated parents in the United States might once again be permitted to visit with their imprisoned mothers and fathers, spouses might again correspond freely and maybe even touch one another, and prisoners might be able to publicize prisoner-abuse as a matter of right.

Has recent publicity surrounding Abu Ghraib and Guantanimo Bay taught the world anything, its that hidden and silenced prisoners are abused and tortured prisoners,and nowhere do prisoners suffer greater actual and risks of torture than within the United States prison system, where innocents are wrongfully convicted as a matter of course, political dissenters are tortured in "supermax" prisons and solitary comfinement for years and sometimes decades while concealed from view of the world, and physical and sexual abuse are rampant.

Help ensure prisoners and their associates in the United States are secured the right to report and expose the horrors of their wrongful convictions and torture through the ability to maintain meaningful human contact by adding your signature to this petition.

To learn more about how you can help join the fight against civil and human rights abuses in the United States, go to www.myspace.com/freemarkjordan.

A petition To Protect First Amendment Rights

To the United States Senate and House Judiciary Committees and to the President of the United States

We, the undersigned, hereby urge you to take legislative action to preserve and protect the First Amendment Freedoms of the 2.5 million human beings imprisoned throughout the United States and the tens of millions more in the global community in association with them.
As you are aware, prisoners constitute the most vulnerable group of society. Under absolute control and politically disenfranchised, their only voice in society at large is that provided for and once protected by the First Amendment. Since 1980, however, prison systems, including the Federal Bureau of Prisons, has been leading the assault against the most fundamental of First Amendment freedoms.

When the U.S. Supreme Court created a new and meaningless standard to govern judicial review for claimed violations of First Amendment free exercise rights, Congress responded with passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, followed by the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, 42 U.S.C. sections 2000bb-cc. Under these statutes, government must demonstrate that any substantial burden on an individual's religious exercise is the least restrictive means of futhering a compelling governmental interest, a standard of judicial review known as "strict scrutiny."

Unfortunately, no federal statutory protections are in place for other First Amendment freedoms of immense importance to prisoners and their loved ones and associates in the community. Instead, the protections afforded rights precious as free speech, the press, association (i.e. visits), court access, and government petition have been reduced to a bare "reasonableness" standard. See Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 87 (1987). More recently, the Supreme Court has rendered that standard toothless by 1) placing the burden of proof on the plaintiff challenging the restriction, and 2) requiring that lower courts defer to the so-called "professional judgement" of prison guards when deciding what is reasonable. See Overton v. Bazzetta, 539 U.S. 126, 132 (2003) ; Beard v. Banks, 126 S.Ct. 2572, 2574 (2006). In other words, prison officials are to decide when the First Amendment does and does not apply.
We urge you to sponsor and support legislation extending the "least restrictive means" and " compelling government interest"tests to all burdens upon First Amendment Freedoms, and not just to substantial burdens on religious exercise.