Receipt of Material From Religious Group Is No Excuse For Prisoner

Hardin v. Michigan Department of Corrections, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47699 (WD MI, July 2, 2007), accepting the recommendations of a federal Magistrate Judge published at 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 50971, is a rather unusual prisoner case. According to the Magistrate's opinion, Michigan prisoners were harassing state and federal officials who had been involved with their arrests and convictions by filing baseless liens and Uniform Commercial Code financing statements that impaired the officials' credit ratings. Inmates also copyrighted the names of those officials and then sought royalties from them. In order to prevent this, the Michigan Department of Corrections classified as contraband "any books, pamphlets, forms or other material regarding actions that can be taken under the UCC". In this case, a prisoner claimed that this order infringed his free exercise rights under the First Amendment and RLUIPA because he was denied access to UCC material that had been sent to him by an "Ambassador of the Washitaw Nation of Moors". The Michigan federal Magistrate Judge found the state's interest in preventing fraud adequate to support its actions.