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The Ninth Circuit avoided the controlling authority under the right to access, see Part I, supra, by invoking the First Amendment right to association to support Murphy's claim. See Murphy v. Shaw, 195 F. 3d 1121, 1125-1126 (CA9 1999). The decision applied circuit precedent, holding that prisoners had a right to assist their fellow inmates in civil rights litigation under the First Amendment right-to-association decisions. See id., at 1126 (citing Rizzo v. Dawson, 778 F. 2d 527, 531-532 (CA9 1985) (citing NAACP v. Button, 371 U. S. 415 (1963) and United Transportation Union v. Michigan Bar, 401 U. S. 576 (1971))). This is an unnecessary and unrealistic extension of the right to association that has no place in the First Amendment. There is no First Amendment right to be a prisoner law clerk.
The First Amendment doctrine invoked by the Ninth Circuit is unnecessary in the prison context because prisoners already have a right of access to the courts. See, e.g., Bounds v. Smith, 430 U. S. 817 (1977). The right-of-association cases allow organizations to secure adequate legal representation for individuals who otherwise may be without proper counsel to present their grievances to the courts, a different and more extensive right of access than that afforded prisoners under Bounds and Lewis v. Casey, 518 U. S. 343 (1996). In NAACP v. Button, 371 U. S. 415 (1963), Virginia had expanded the definition of "capper" in order to hinder the NAACP in getting clients for civil rights actions. See 371 U. S., at 423-426. What mattered was not the act of soliciting clients, but the fact that the NAACP's litigation gave a voice to people who otherwise would not be heard. In this context,
"litigation is not a technique of resolving private differences; it is a means for achieving the lawful objections of equality of treatment by all government, federal, state and local, for the members of the Negro community in this country. It is thus a form of political expression. Groups which find themselves unable to achieve their objectives through the ballot frequently turn to the courts." Id., at 429.
The Virginia rule was therefore unconstitutional because its vagueness and potential for selective enforcement endangered the ability of people to protect their civil rights through the courts. See id., at 435-436.
The Button rule extends to nonpolitical litigation. In a series of cases, this Court upheld the rights of unions to secure counsel for their members in workplace-related personal injury and workers' compensation actions under state or federal law. See Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen v. Virginia Bar, 377 U. S. 1, 8 (1964); Mine Workers v. Illinois Bar Assn., 389 U. S. 217, 218, 225 (1967); United Transportation Union v. Michigan Bar, 401 U. S. 576 (1971). Although these decisions went beyond Button's premise of giving a voice to the politically powerless, they still centered on the theme of securing effective representation for the organization's members. As this Court stated in Trainmen, "Laymen cannot be expected to know how to protect their rights when dealing with practiced and carefully counseled adversaries, cf. Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335 [(1963)], and for them to associate together to help one another to preserve and enforce their rights under federal laws cannot be condemned as a threat to legal ethics." 377 U. S., at 7. Mine Workers, relying on Button and Trainmen, also held that the union could retain counsel to represent its individual members in private actions. See 389 U. S., at 223-224. Finally, in United Transportation Union, the Court stated "The common thread running through our decision in NAACP v. Button, Trainmen, and United Mine Workers is that collective activity undertaken to obtain meaningful access to the courts is a fundamental right within the protection of the First Amendment." 401 U. S., at 585 (emphasis added); accord, In re Primus, 436 U. S. 412, 426 (1978).
These First Amendment cases are not necessary in a prison context already governed by its own right-to-access jurisprudence, or when the prospective client already has counsel. If a prisoner is prevented from presenting claims attacking his or her sentence or the prison conditions to a court, then the prison right-of-access cases are violated, and the judiciary can intervene to correct the violation. See Part I, supra. Therefore the First Amendment right-of-association cases could only be relevant in situations where the prisoner does not have a right to access under Casey or the other prisoner rights cases. While the applicability of one constitutional guarantee does not preempt other amendments, see Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U. S. 56, 70 (1992), the delicate balance struck in the prisoner rights cases should not be disrupted through the intrusion of these civilian right-to-association cases. When one constitutional provision already provides a standard for reviewing a particular government action, that standard should not be subverted by invoking some other part of the Constitution to create a different standard. Cf. Conn v. Gabbert, 526 U. S. 286, 293 (1999) (the Fourth Amendment, not the Fourteenth, provides the standard to analyze the reasonableness of a search).
The right to access provides an excellent example of the delicate balance in prison law. The civilian First Amendment cases provide for a relatively broad right, allowing organizations considerable flexibility to secure for their members effective and affordable representation by counsel for any litigation involving a member. See Mine Workers, supra, 389 U. S., at 223 (not limited to political claims); United Transportation Union, supra, 401 U. S., at 585 (effective and affordable representation). The prisoner right is far more limited. It is not a right to effective litigation, but merely the ability to present grievances to the courts. Casey, supra, 518 U. S., at 354. The grievances covered by this right are similarly limited in comparison to the First Amendment right.
"In other words, Bounds does not guarantee inmates the wherewithal to transform themselves into litigating engines capable of filing everything from shareholder derivative actions to slip-and-fall claims. The tools it requires to be provided are those that the inmates need in order to attack their sentences, directly or collaterally, and in order to challenge the conditions of their confinement. Impairment of any other litigating capacity is simply one of the incidental (and perfectly constitutional) consequences of conviction and incarceration." Id., at 355 (emphasis in original).
Letting the right-to-association cases inside the prison walls disrupts the careful balance struck by this Court in Casey and its other prisoner access-to-the-courts cases, because the broad association right and the limited prisoner right are incompatible. Therefore no other circuit follows this expansive interpretation of the right to association. See Bass v. Singletary, 143 F. 3d 1442, 1446 (CA11 1998) (listing cases).
The Button line of cases is particularly inappropriate to apply to prisons because they are based upon the right to association.
"Perhaps the most obvious of the First Amendment rights that are necessarily curtailed by confinement are those associational rights that the First Amendment protects outside of prison walls. The concept of incarceration itself entails a restriction on the freedom of inmates to associate with those outside of the penal institution. Equally as obvious, the inmate's 'status as a prisoner' and the operational realities of a prison dictate restrictions on the associational rights among inmates." Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union, Inc., 433 U. S. 119, 125-126 (1977).
The types of organizations which can help their members get access to the courts in the civilian world can be banned inside prisons. While labor unions were the beneficiaries of the Trainmen, Mine Workers, and United Transportation Union cases, such organizations are prohibited inside prisons. See id., at 126, n. 4. Prison authorities can prevent the formation "of a functioning organization of the inmates within the prison" through such means as banning inmate solicitation or group meetings by prisoners. See id., at 129. Since a prison can forbid "concerted group activity" by prisoners, see ibid., the right to association decisions have no place inside the prison. These cases are simply irrelevant to prison life and do not allow a court to circumvent the limits placed on the prisoner's right of access to the courts by this Court in Casey.
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