Fifty-eight Iowa inmates are suing state officials in federal court, seeking $25,000 each in damages, claiming they have been denied a constitutional right to pornography in the state’s prison system, the Des Moines Register reports. The lawsuit seeks to overturn a new state law that has shut down designated “pornography reading rooms” in Iowa’s prisons. The law also prohibits inmates from having nude photos in their cells. The ban includes Playboy magazine, which has long been allowed in the state’s nine prisons, which hold 8,575 inmates.
The plaintiffs from the Fort Dodge Correctional Facility are led by Allen Miles, 70, who is serving a life sentence for the stabbing death of Cheryl Kleinschrodt in 1982. The suit contends that the law was enacted under the guise of “morality,” and blames “religious tyrants” who have no regard for the U.S. Constitution or Declaration of Independence. The lawsuit argues that if female correctional officers employed in Iowa’s prisons for men can’t handle an environment that includes photographic matter featuring female nudity and related matters that “they should find employment elsewhere.” The new law specifically says funds appropriated to the Iowa Department of Corrections shall not be used to distribute or make available any commercially published information or material to an inmate that is sexually explicit or features nudity.