Michael Hayes v. Kathy Radford

MEMORANDUM

Michael T. Hayes, an Idaho state prisoner, appeals pro se from the district court’s judgment in his 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action alleging interference with his mail. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 . We review de novo. Resnick v. Hayes, 213 F.3d 443, 447 (9th Cir.2000) (dismissal under 28 U.S.C. § 1915A); Keenan v. Hall, 83 F.3d 1083, 1088 (9th Cir.1996) (summary judgment), amended by 135 F.3d 1318 (9th Cir.1998). We affirm.

The district court properly granted summary judgment as to the portion of Hayes’s legal mail claim that was properly exhausted because Hayes failed to raise a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether any legal mail had been opened outside his presence. See Keenan, 83 F.3d at 1094 (“Mail from the courts, as contrasted to mail from a prisoner’s lawyer, is not legal mail.”).

The district court properly dismissed Hayes’s claim regarding the holding of his mail while Hayes was temporarily housed at Shoshone County Jail because the allegations in Hayes’s complaint and the attachments thereto show that defendant Radford’s handling of Hayes’s mail was reasonably related to a legitimate penological interest and constituted an isolated…