Turner v. Safley
Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.
Status
More on how this was screened
The Supreme Court later excluded prison racial classifications from Turner and required strict scrutiny instead. The earlier Washington Supreme Court judgment in Harper v. State, which had refused to apply Turner to involuntary antipsychotic medication, does not supply a live treatment: the U.S. Supreme Court reversed it in Washington v. Harper and held that the state court erred by refusing Turner's reasonableness standard. The other reviewed opinions followed or applied Turner, reported the two treatments below, concerned later statutes or different precedent, or rejected arguments that Turner displaced more specific constitutional tests. Four superseded panel opinions were withdrawn and produce no entries.
6,476 later cases cite Turner v. Safley; 231 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.
Relying on Turner v. Safley?
This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.
Treatments
Superseded by Statute
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The Ninth Circuit held that RLUIPA replaced Turner's legitimate-penological-interest test with compelling-interest and least-restrictive-means review for statutory institutional religious-exercise claims.
Warsoldier v. Woodford · Ninth Circuit · filed
Congress did this by replacing the “legitimate penological interest” standard articulated in Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89 (1987), with the “compelling governmental interest” and “least restrictive means” tests codified at 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc-1(a).
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Limited
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The Supreme Court confined Turner by holding that its deferential standard does not govern racial classifications in prisons, which remain subject to strict scrutiny.
Johnson v. California · Supreme Court of the United States · filed
The CDC invites us to make an exception to the rule that strict scrutiny applies to all racial classifications, and instead to apply the deferential standard of review articulated in Turner v. Safley, 482 U. S. 78 (1987), because its segregation policy applies only in the prison context. We decline the invitation. In Turner, we considered a claim by Missouri prisoners that regulations restricting inmate marriages and inmate-to-inmate correspondence were unconstitutional. Id., at 81. We rejected the prisoners’ argument that the regulations should be subject to strict scrutiny, asking instead whether the regulation that burdened the prisoners’ fundamental rights was “reasonably related” to “legitimate penological interests.” Id., at 89. We have never applied Turner to racial classifications. Turner itself did not involve any racial classification, and it cast no doubt on Lee.
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