Beard v. Banks

Beard v. Banks
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 27, 2006 Decided June 28, 2006
Full case name	Jeffrey A. Beard, Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections v. Ronald Banks, Individually and On Behalf of All Others Similarly Situated
Docket no.	04-1739
Citations	548 U.S. 521 (more) 126 S. Ct. 2572; 165 L. Ed. 2d 697
Case history
Prior	Respondent's motion for summary judgment granted in the District Court; reversed, 399 F.3d 134 (3d Cir. 2005); cert. granted, 546 U.S. 1015 (2005)
Holding
Prison officials had adequate legal support for their policy of withholding reading material from incorrigible inmates.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Antonin Scalia Anthony Kennedy · David Souter Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito
Case opinions
Plurality	Breyer, joined by Roberts, Kennedy, Souter
Concurrence	Thomas (in judgment), joined by Scalia
Dissent	Stevens, joined by Ginsburg
Dissent	Ginsburg
Alito took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U. S. C. §1983; U.S. Const. amend. I

Beard v. Banks, 548 U.S. 521 (2006), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court in which the petitioner, Ronald Banks, challenged the constitutionality of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections policy of denying access to written material such as newspapers and magazines, to violent ("Level 2") inmates, on the grounds that the policy was a violation of his First Amendment rights, including freedom of speech.^[1][2]