Block v. Rutherford (1984)

In Block v. Rutherford, 468 U.S. 576 (1984), the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 6–3 vote, overturned a decision by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and allowed authorities at the Los Angeles County Central Jail to deny contact visitation rights with family and friends to pretrial detainees and to permit shakedown searches of individual cells without being observed by the inmates.

Chief Justice Warren Burger's majority opinion largely relied on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bell v. Wolfish (1979), which had permitted body cavity searches of inmates after visitation. He reiterated that the Court viewed itself as having a “very limited role” in review of decisions by administrators of detention facilities. Consistent with Wolfish, he thought the Court should limit itself to determining whether actions are “reasonably related to legitimate governmental objectives.” He further thought that the tie between banning contact visits and internal security “is too obvious to warrant extended discussion.” The Court should not engage in the process of weighing the costs of such visits against their perceived benefits. Similarly, Burger could find little difference between the searches that were in question here and those that had been approved in Wolfish. He rejected the argument that Wolfish had rested purely on the Fourth Amendment while the actions here involved a challenge under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Justice Harry Blackmun authored a concurring opinion upholding both practices but arguing that the Court's reasoning was too deferential to prison authorities. He feared “the Court's apparent willingness to substitute the rhetoric of judicial deference for meaningful scrutiny of constitutional claims in the prison setting.”

Justice Thurgood Marshall authored a dissent, joined by Justices William J. Brennan and John Paul Stevens. Marshall saw the decision as part of a misguided series of cases involving rights of prisoners. He continued to stand by his dissent in Wolfish but thought even that decision did not mandate this one. He believed that prisoners pointed to a valuable right in wanting to be able to meet and embrace their families and that steps could be taken to guard against smuggling drugs or weapons or possible hazards to visitors. He further thought that unobserved searches of cells could lead to deprivation of property without due process of law.