GREGORY WILLIAMS, Plаintiff-Appellant, v. STATE OF WISCONSIN, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
No. 02-4233
United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit
Argued June 10, 2003—Decided July 15, 2003
Before KANNE, DIANE P. WOOD, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.
DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge. Parolee Gregory Williams wants to go to the Philippines to marry a woman with whom he began corresponding while he was incarcerated. He contends in this action, which he brought under
In 1991 Williams was convicted by a Wisconsin state court and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. The record does not disclose either Williams‘s crime or the lеngth of his sentence, but six years after he was incarcerated, he apparently began to correspond with Maria Dela Rosa—a Filipino citizen residing in Mandaloyong City. The pair eventually agreed to marry (the record again is silent on the date), and in May 2001, Williams was paroled.
After his release Williams took up residence in Milwaukee and attempted to arrange a face-to-face meeting with Dela Rosa. In January 2002, Williams‘s father wrote a letter to President Bush asking for help bringing Dela Rosa to the United States. This letter made its way to INS officials, who responded that Williams already had applied for a fiancée visa and that State Department officials in the Philippines had refused to issue a tourist visa to Dela Rosa for fear thаt she would remain in the United States illegally. The agency also opined that unless Dela Rosa became related to a U.S. citizen or developed professional skills in short supply in the United States, she had only a remote chance of immigrating successfully.
Faced with these problems bringing Dela Rosa to Wisconsin, Williams proposed to leave the country to meet her. He first asked his parole agent for a travel permit to visit the Philippines. The agent refused, and his decision was upheld by various parole administrators, who noted that
After exhausting his administrative remedies, Williams turned to federal court. In July 2002 he filed this action contending that
II
Before turning to the merits of Williams‘s appeal, we pause to consider whether this case was properly brought under
For prisoners, the difference between a civil rights action and a collateral attack is easy to dеscribe. Challenges to conditions of confinement (such as pollution in the prison or deliberate indifference to serious medical needs) fall under
Here Williams wants relief from one of the restrictions imposed by his parole—a ban on international travel. This court in Drollinger v. Milligan, 552 F.2d 1220 (7th Cir. 1977), confronted a similar request when an Indiana probationer brought a
We concluded that the probationer‘s contentions should have been presented in a collateral attack. The court explained that the challenged restrictions “define the perimeters of her confinement.” Id. at 1224. Thus, eliminating or changing one of the restrictions would alter the confinement: “figuratively speaking, one of the ‘bars’ would be removed from [the probationer‘s] cell.” Id. at 1225; see also Clark v. Prichard, 812 F.2d 991, 997-99 (5th Cir. 1987) (concurring opinion) (same result for a probationer who was required to work in lieu of collecting welfare benefits).
Drollinger remains the law in this circuit, and we have no reason to question its authority here. The question is
III
On the merits, there are a number of problems with Williams‘s action. First, he has attempted to sue the State of Wisconsin, the state‘s department of corrections (a state agency), and three parole officials in their official capacities. (Williams did not include the words “official capacity” in the caption of the complaint. The district court, however, noted in its written memorandum that Williams‘s lawyer had abandoned any individual-capacity claims at a telеphone conference. And although the record does not contain a transcript of this conference, Williams on appeal does not dispute the district court‘s characterization of that call.) Williams‘s decision to forego an individual-capacity suit blocks his claims for damages under
To the extent Williams is seeking injunctivе and declaratory relief against ongoing or anticipated violations of his rights to travel and marry, he is not barred at the outset from proceeding. Official-capacity suits against state officials seeking prospective relief are permitted by
That brings us to the merits of Williams‘s claims that his constitutional rights to travel and to marry have been violated by Wisconsin. It is true that the Supreme Court has recognized that under various constitutional provisions including the privileges and immunities clauses of Article IV and thе Fourteenth Amendment, ordinary citizens have a protected right to interstate travel. See, e.g., Saenz v. Roe, 526 U.S. 489, 498-504 (1999). But, like prisoners, see Meachum v. Fano, 427 U.S. 215, 224-25 (1976), parolees such as Williams have no right to control where they live in the United States; the right to travel is extinguished for the entire balance of their sentences. See Alonzo v. Rozanski, 808 F.2d 637, 638 (7th Cir. 1986); Bagley v. Harvey, 718 F.2d 921, 924 (9th Cir. 1983); see also Jones v. Helms, 452 U.S. 412, 419-20 (1981) (explaining that a person who has committed an offense
More fundamentally, international travel is not the same as interstate travel, even for free persons. See, e.g., Haig v. Agee, 453 U.S. 280, 306-07 (1981); Califano v. Aznavorian, 439 U.S. 170, 176 (1978). For рersons still subject to the restrictions of parole or its equivalent, this distinction is even more important. To begin with, the state has no inherent right to enforce its criminal laws or restrictions imposed under those laws outside the United States. See RESTATEMENT (THIRD) OF FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW § 432(1) (1987). Only with the permission оf the foreign country in question may the law enforcement officers of one country exercise powers in another one. Id. § 432(2). Thus, Williams‘s suggestion that the State of Wisconsin could just send him to the Philippines in the custody of his parole officer is not a realistic one. A host of formalities, which are out of the control of the State of Wisconsin, would have to be satisfied before such a ploy was effective: the State Department of the United States (and perhaps the Justice Department as well) would need to agree to ask permission for this move from the Filipino authorities, and the latter would have to agree. Wisconsin thus has entirely rational reasons for flatly prohibiting parolees from traveling outside the country.
The fact that the state permits interstate travel under some circumstances for parolees in no way undercuts its rule with respect to international travel. The states are bound together by the federal Constitution, after all, and the Constitution itself contains a number of рrovisions that ensure the possibility of interstate cooperation in the enforcement of criminal law. The list includes the Full Faith and Credit Clause of Article IV, sec. 1; the Interstate Extradition Clause of Article IV, sec. 2, cl. 2; and the Interstate Compact Clausе of Article I, sec. 10, cl. 3. The last of those three is especially relevant, as there is in fact
The fact that the right to interstate travel and the right to marry havе been described as fundamental rights adds nothing to Williams‘s arguments. We accept Williams‘s assertion that he wants to go to the Philippines so that he can marry Dela Rosa, but he too readily assumes that the state‘s travel restriction (which we have already found to be rationally based) amounts to an absolute prohibition on his right to marry. It is true that Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987), recognizes the fundamental right of prisoners to marry—a right that may be limited only for sound penological reasons. Id. at 94-100. But no one here has forbidden Williams from getting married оr from marrying Dela Rosa. Compare id. at 96-97; Martin v. Snyder, 329 F.3d 919, 920 (7th Cir. 2003). At most, the state‘s rule has affected either the timing or the place of his marriage plans. This type of incidental interference with the right to marry does not give rise to a constitutional claim if there is “some justificаtion” for the interference. Keeney v. Heath, 57 F.3d 579, 580-81 (7th Cir. 1995); see also Wright v. MetroHealth Med. Ctr., 58 F.3d 1130, 1135-36 (6th Cir. 1995); Parks v. City of Warner Robins, 43 F.3d 609, 613 (11th Cir. 1995); cf. Berrigan v. Sigler, 499 F.2d 514, 519-20 (D.C. Cir. 1974) (parolees could be prohibited from meeting
IV
There is no set of facts that could be imagined that would change this assessment of the legality of Wisconsin‘s ban on international travel for parolees. The district court accordingly was correct to dismiss this case under
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Clerk of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
USCA-02-C-0072—7-15-03