Former inmate cannot challenge Internet/speech restrictions under the First Amendment

This prisoners' rights case asks whether an inmate can sue DOCSS officials under the First Amendment for imposing special Internet-related conditions for his release from prison following his sentence on two rape convictions. He cannot sue either official. One defendant has absolute immunity, and the other has qualified immunity.

The case is Peoples v. Leon, issued on March 20. Peoples was denied discretionary early release from prison and the Parole Board set special conditions for him to satisfy during his post-release supervision. These special conditions limited Peoples' use of the Internet, accessing social networking sites, Internet gaming, and even possessing a computer or a communications device that allows you to access the Internet. 

The first defendant, Alexander gets absolute immunity over her role in imposing the special conditions because she did so in a quasi-judicial capacity as Commissioner of the Parole Board. Judges get absolute immunity for their judicial acts. Other government officials also enjoy that immunity if they perform functions that are closely associated with judicial acts, such as administrative law judges. The Second Circuit has already held that parole board officials deciding to grant or deny parole perform quasi-judicial functions that entitle them to immunity  The question here is whether immunity is extended to the Board's act of imposing special conditions of release. The Court of Appeals (Livingston, Parker and Robinson) answers that question in the affirmative, as the Board is empowered to determine the conditions of release, and that power coexists with the Board's quasi-judicial power to grant, deny, or revoke parole. The statutory guiding these decisions "connects the parole board's acts of granting, denying, or revoking parole directly to its determination of special conditions." 

The second defendant, Leon, gets qualified immunity for her role in imposing the special conditions. Qualified immunity is what it sounds like. Some defendants get immunity, and some do not, depending on whether the law was clearly established at the time of the purported constitutional violation. Peoples says the Internet restrictions violate his constitutional right to Internet access. In 2019, the Second Circuit said in United States v. Eaglin that "the imposition of a total Internet ban as a condition of supervised release inflicts a severe deprivation of liberty" that will be reasonable in "highly unusual circumstances." As Leon made her recommendations in 2018, prior to that Second Circuit ruling, she argues that Peoples cannot win his case because the law was not yet clearly established that she may have done anything wrong in imposing the conditions. 

But Peoples points to a 2017 Supreme Court ruling, Peckingham v. North Carolina, which stated that "to foreclose access to social media altogether is to prevent the user from engaging in the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights." That language looks pretty good for Peoples, but he cannot overcome qualified immunity because the language in Peckingham was broad "and its analysis did not turn on the fact that the individuals impacted by the North Carolina statute were no longer subject to state supervision." In other words, the language in Peckingham did not address Peoples' case in particular. Leon thus gets qualified immunity, and Peoples cannot recover any damages against her.