DISCLAIMER: Any unofficial case summaries below are prepared by the clerk's office
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164313P.pdf 03/30/2018 Charles Sisney v. Denny Kaemingk
U.S. Court of Appeals Case No: 16-4313
and No: 16-4480
U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota - Sioux Falls
[PUBLISHED] [Gruender, Author, with Benton, Circuit Judge, and Tunheim,
District Judge]
Prisoner case - Prisoner Civil Rights. In facial and as-applied
overbreadth challenge to provisions of the State of South Dakota's
prison-pornography policy, the court would first examine whether the
policy was unconstitutional as applied to Sisney's in order to avoid the
need to reach the claims of facial unconstitutionality; such an approach
reflects the proper deference owed corrections officials and would permit
the fashioning of more limited relief; the court cannot adopt the district
court's as-applied analysis because it was error for the district court to
resurrect and apply the prison's 2000 policy after it found the 2014
policy was facially unconstitutional; once the court facially invalidated
the 2014 policy, there was nothing left to apply, given that South Dakota
Department of Corrections policies supercede rather than amend previous
provisions in their entirety; in light of this error, the best policy is
to vacate the district court's order and allow the district court to
reevaluate Sisney's as-applied claims based on the 2014 policy; only after
the district court makes this determination, will the district court be
able to decide whether and to what extent it is appropriate to consider
Sisney's facial challenges to the policy.