Challenge to law barring ex-felons from visiting prisons survives with deep cuts

A federal judge dismissed most claims in a lawsuit challenging California Penal Code 4571, which bars anyone with a felony conviction from setting foot on prison grounds or 'lands belonging or adjacent thereto' without warden permission. Activist William Brown, also known as Minister King X, was charged under the law after attending a 2021 protest outside a state medical facility, and sued alongside advocacy group All of Us or None, which says more than 200 people have been jailed under the statute.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Calabretta dismissed claims tied to the 2021 arrest for lack of standing and rejected the overbreadth challenge, finding most applications of the law aren't aimed at expressive conduct. But he let one claim survive: that the phrase 'adjacent thereto' is unconstitutionally vague, since the state offered no limiting principle for what counts as adjacent to a prison in urban versus rural settings.

The plaintiffs get another chance to amend their complaint, keeping the case alive on its narrowest possible ground.

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