[PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

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No. 21-14230 ____________________

RICKEY LEE CHRISTMAS, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus LIEUTENANT J. NABORS, Individual and Official capacity, SERGEANT MARSHA HILL, Individual and Official capacity,

Defendants-Appellees.

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Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida USCA11 Case: 21-14230 Document: 37-1 Date Filed: 08/08/2023 Page: 2 of 22

2 Opinion of the Court 21-14230

D.C. Docket No. 8:20-cv-00259-TPB-AAS ____________________

Before ROSENBAUM, BRANCH, and BRASHER, Circuit Judges. ROSENBAUM, Circuit Judge: Henry L. Stimson said, “Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail.” Henry L. Stimson & McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War 188 (1947). 1 He had a point. After all, no one likes it when someone else reads their mail. And as it turns out, even the possibility that a jail official could read a prisoner’s legal mail can violate the prisoner’s First Amendment rights. This case is about that possibility at the Polk County Jail. When Plaintiff-Appellant Rickey Christmas was a pretrial detainee at that Jail, the Jail required him to scan his legal mail into a com- puter that contained a memory chip. Though Christmas does not

1 Henry L. Stimson is known for many things. Among others, he served twice

as the United States Secretary of War: first, from 1911 to 1913 in President William Howard Taft’s administration, and then again more than 25 years later, in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration, from 1940 through September 1945. Henry L. Stimson (1911-1913), U. VA. MILLER CTR., https://perma.cc/X6ZT-MTJJ. That second term included the entirety of World War II. Stimson also did a stint as Secretary of State, from 1929 to 1933, in President Herbert Hoover’s administration. Id. He is remembered in that role for many things, including his articulation of the Stimson Doctrine, which refuses to recognize any situation, treaty, or agreement procured by the un- lawful use of armed force. David Turns, The Stimson Doctrine of None-Recogni- tion: Its Historical Genesis and Influence on Contemporary International Law, 2 Chi- nese J. Int’l L. 106–07 (2003). USCA11 Case: 21-14230 Document: 37-1 Date Filed: 08/08/2023 Page: 3 of 22

21-14230 Opinion of the Court 3

know whether anyone other than he read his mail, he worried that the Jail could and may have, since it had access to the computer into which he had scanned his mail. So Christmas sued Polk County and two employees who worked at the Jail. He alleged, among other things, that the Jail and its employees interfered with his right to communicate freely and confidentially with his attorneys by forcing him to scan his le- gal mail into a computer with a memory chip. Because that claim is plausible on its face, we hold that the district court erred in dis- missing it. Otherwise, we affirm the district court’s dismissal of Christmas’s complaint.