Remarking that it’s not feasible to jail the Iowa Department of Corrections for deliberately violating a court order, a Polk County judge has fined the agency $1,500 for contempt of court.

The penalty stems from a lawsuit that 13 prison inmates, then housed at Anamosa State Penitentiary, filed against the Iowa Department of Corrections in 2018. The inmates alleged the DOC was violating their constitutional rights by denying them access to magazines or other materials with nudity or sexually explicit content.

The lawsuit was triggered by the Iowa Legislature’s 2018 revision of the state law that restricts inmate access to adult content. After the 2018 revisions, the law barred any commercially published material that contained not only sexually explicit content, but also nudity.

A judge in the case concluded the law and the DOC policies that sprang from it were potentially too broad and could infringe on the inmates’ First Amendment rights. The court issued an injunction that stated the DOC “shall not prevent the distribution of materials to (the plaintiffs) and other inmates similarly situated that features mere non-sexually explicit nudity.”

In 2022, with the injunction still in place, one of the plaintiffs sought to hold the DOC in contempt of court, alleging the department was violating the 2019 order by denying his request to purchase lingerie magazines. The inmate later testified that he had filed a complaint with the Iowa Office of Ombudsman on the issue. Court exhibits show that in October 2020, the ombudsman’s office told the inmate it questioned the DOC’s “dubious interpretation and application of the court injunction” — indicating the DOC had been put on notice that it was violating the court order.

At around that same time, another plaintiff complained the DOC had taken away his copy of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue – a magazine that’s commonly available at grocery stores and other mass-market retailers.

During the trial, Dee Radeke, an inmate and prison librarian, testified that after the Legislature amended the law in 2018, a prison security director asked him to pull from circulation any pictures of pin-up girls, graphic novels or novels containing strong sexual content such as “Shades of Grey.”

DOC Executive Officer Rebecca Bowker testified that she followed the court’s order “to a T,” but also testified that she wasn’t sure whether she had even seen the order. In addition, Bowker testified that she believed DOC policy prohibited photos of women in thong bikinis on the grounds that woman’s genitalia would not be “substantially” covered.

The inmates lost their case, with Polk County District Court Judge Jeffrey Farrell concluding they did not have a First Amendment right to possess materials containing nudity.  Farrell then turned to the issue of whether the DOC had violated the 2019 injunction while the case was still pending.

The DOC, Farrell concluded, had “violated this order in multiple ways,” in part by amending its own policies in 2022 – long after the inmates had sued and the injunction was issued – in a way that more explicitly barred any materials that included nudity.

“The injunction had been in place for three years at the time DOC changed its policy in 2022,” Farrell noted. “This action shows DOC acted willfully in denying nude content despite the injunction. The DOC denied (one plaintiff’s) request for three editions of Playboy that had been approved under the prior policy.”

Because there were three separate magazines the inmate was denied, Farrell found there were three separate instances of contempt. In determining what sanctions to impose against the DOC, the judge observed it “does not consider jail as a real option, even though there is no excuse for DOC’s failure to comply with the order. DOC as an entity understood the injunction. Still, it amended its policy to ban materials containing nudity and Executive Officer Bowker personally denied some materials containing nudity.”

Adding there was no single individual who could or should be jailed as a result of the “institutional” violations of the court’s order, Farrell imposed the maximum $500 penalty for each of the three violations.

Farrell wrote that he considered awarding the $1,500 to the inmate who pursued the contempt action “so he could receive some remuneration for the unlawful denial of the publications he requested.” The law, however, stipulates the fines are punitive in nature, Farrell noted, and are intended for “the benefit of the state” – the same entity that will be paying the fine.

The Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Last week, the inmates filed a motion for a new trial as well as an appeal of Farrell’s decision.

Editor’s note: Reporter Clark Kauffman worked for the Iowa Office of Ombudsman from October 2018 through November 2019.