Key Points

  • The Eighth Circuit reversed the denial of qualified immunity to three Washington County Detention Center officials on a pretrial detainee's First Amendment claim over limited access to books, newspapers and religious materials.
  • The majority held that Human Rights Defense Center v. Baxter County, which addressed de facto bans on inmate communication with outsiders, does not squarely govern reading-material limits at a jail offering tablets, kiosks and mail.
  • The court found some of the detainee's factual allegations, including that he had no access to religious materials, blatantly contradicted by the record, citing his own emails to the chaplain.
  • Judge Grasz dissented on the religious-materials claim, concluding the court lacked interlocutory jurisdiction because genuine factual disputes remained and that a de facto ban on religious materials would violate clearly established law.
  • The case was remanded for further proceedings, and the court agreed that a preliminary injunction requiring daily newspaper uploads is moot.

A federal appeals court on Nov. 12 shielded three officials at an Arkansas county jail from a pretrial detainee's First Amendment suit over the jail's limits on books, newspapers and religious materials. The court held that no earlier decision clearly barred a jail from cutting back on paper and moving much of its reading material onto tablets and kiosks.

A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed a district court's denial of qualified immunity to Sheriff Jay Cantrell, Major Randall Denzer and Lieutenant Nolan Ake of the Washington County Detention Center. Judge Kobes wrote for the court. Judge Grasz joined most of the opinion but dissented on the religious-materials claim.

The decision holds that the circuit's precedent on "de facto" bans of inmate communication with outsiders does not clearly govern reading limits at a jail that offers tablets, kiosks and mail. The judges also split over whether an appeals court may set aside a trial court's finding that key facts are disputed.

John William Scharnhorst III spent several months as a pretrial detainee at the jail and sued without a lawyer under 42 U.S.C. ยง 1983. The jail had problems with inmates using paper to "jam locks, flood cells, impair ventilation, conceal contraband, make weapons, and cover lights, windows, and cameras."

To reduce paper, the jail stopped providing physical newspapers and capped inmates at four books in a cell: three paperbacks from a book cart and one religious text. Because books had been used to smuggle contraband, inmates could not order their own. The donated book cart was often understocked and rarely moved during the Covid-19 protocol.

The jail instead partnered with a tech company that supplies communal kiosks and tablets. Inmates get 30-minute kiosk sessions and 15-minute tablet sessions, then a "cool down" period unless they buy a "Gold Pass." Staff upload a scan of the local newspaper daily. Scharnhorst used a device on more than 80% of the days he was held. He asked for the King James Bible but did not get it.

The district court, adopting a magistrate judge's recommendation, granted summary judgment to the jail on Scharnhorst's claim over missed newspaper uploads but denied immunity to Cantrell, Denzer and Ake. It relied on the Eighth Circuit's 2021 decision in Human Rights Defense Center v. Baxter County, which said a de facto permanent ban on inmate communication with outsiders would present a serious constitutional issue.

Kobes wrote that Scharnhorst's claim is not "squarely governed" by that warning. Inmates can send paper mail and two free emails a week, and incoming mail is scanned onto the devices, so the policies did not amount to a de facto ban, the court held. The majority also cited the Supreme Court's 2026 decision in Zorn v. Linton, which faulted a lower court for failing to identify a case involving similar actions in similar circumstances.

Baxter involved a publisher's challenge to a county policy that blocked inmate access to all of its publications, which the court said was neither the right Scharnhorst asserted nor the policy the jail enforced. Baxter also arose at a jail where inmates could not use a kiosk or tablet. If anything, Kobes wrote, quoting a 2025 Eighth Circuit decision, the Baxter rulings "indicat[e] that the law isn't as clearly established in this area as the district court concluded."

On an appeal like this one, the appeals court accepts the trial court's facts unless they are "blatantly contradicted by the record." Some of Scharnhorst's allegations failed that test, the majority held, citing records showing the newspaper went up most days and that he received the chaplain's religious pamphlets, read them and shared them with other inmates.

The court also distinguished religious-freedom cases in which prisons banned one faith's texts while allowing others. It rejected Scharnhorst's argument that the officials had waived immunity on the religious-materials claim, noting that the burden of showing clearly established law was his. "There were undoubtedly limitations placed on Scharnhorst's access to books, newspapers, and religious materials, but he was not subject to a 'permanent de facto ban,'" Kobes wrote.

Grasz would have held that the court lacked jurisdiction over the religious-materials claim. In an interlocutory appeal, the appeals court is "precluded from reviewing the district court's finding that the disputes are genuine," he wrote. He pointed to the district court's finding that the record suggested detainees "cannot obtain access to any religious materials at all."

Grasz noted that the district court had found no dispute that the kiosks held no books or religious materials. Scharnhorst alleged that the tablets were shared with other detainees and at times available only an hour a day. "These factual disputes are critical since illusory access is no access," Grasz wrote, citing Baxter.

Grasz wrote that "the court disregards certain parts of the record and reconstructs others in Defendants' favor to overcome the district court's conclusion that there was a 'de facto ban.'" He added, "Respectfully, that is not our role." In his view, a long line of precedent gave jail officials fair notice that effectively banning access to religious materials violates the First Amendment.

The majority answered that the no-access finding was itself blatantly contradicted, noting that the tablets held Bibles and other religious materials and that Scharnhorst admitted there were Bibles on the book cart. It quoted one of his emails thanking the chaplain for a booklet: "I read it and passed it on to another detainee."

The panel agreed with the district court that an earlier preliminary injunction requiring daily newspaper uploads is moot. It sent the case back to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas for further proceedings and thanked the lawyer appointed to represent Scharnhorst on appeal.