A band of Iowa inmates is suing “religious tyrants” for preventing them from accessing unfiltered, free porn. The lawsuit alleges the new law, which blocks access to porn in all the state’s correctional failities, is unconstitutional and an attempt to “enforce morality.”
Led by Allen Curtis Miles, who is serving life for first-degree murder, 58 inmates of the Fort Dodge Correctional Facility are seeking the porn and a bonus– $25,000 each in damages, alleging the ban violates their constitutional rights.
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The lawsuit’s creatively written appeal alleges the state’s prison system is controlled by a Dominatrix sect or a government contrived of Nazis” under the banner of “morality” and that it represents a form of extortion by withholding federal funds from prisons that make pornographic materials available.
The suit also claims the ban was unlawfully inflicted on them by Judge Robert Pratt of the US District Court in Des Moines. Pratt initially refused the suit for lacking the proper paperwork and fees, but permitted the inmates do-over last week with the proper procedural formalities.
The new law shuts down the “pornography reading rooms” that attempted to impose some institutional control over the inmates’ porn consumption. It also bans inmates from possessing nude photos in their cells.
It went into effect earlier this month across Iowa’s nine state prisons.
The “reading rooms” were established after a 1988 federal court ruling found the state’s ban on sexually explicit materials in prisons to be vague to the point of unconstitutionality.
The prisoners’ suit echoes that original decision. Terms like “explicit nudity” are too vague to legislate, they alledge , adding that these terms stem from enforced religious morality and that attempting to impose them on the inmate population violates the separation of church and state.
But it’s difficult to tell what the writers had in mind in some places.
“If God wanted us clothed, he would have adorned unborn with linens prior to birth,” reads one point. The inmates also argue that if female correctional officers can’t handle the sight of an occasional nude picture, they should seek employment elsewhere.