402
Opinion of Souter, J.
While a more stringent standing requirement would, of course, serve to curb courts from interference with prison administration, that legitimate object is adequately served by two rules of existing law. Bounds itself makes it clear that the means of providing access is subject to the State's own choice. If, for example, a State wishes to avoid judicial review of its library standards and the adequacy of library services, it can choose a means of access involving use of the complaint-form procedure mentioned by the Court today. Ante, at 352. And any judicial remedy, whatever the chosen means of court access, must be consistent with the rule in Turner v. Safley, 482 U. S. 78 (1987), that prison restrictions are valid if reasonably related to valid penological interests. Turner's level of scrutiny surely serves to limit undue intrusions and thus obviates the need for further protection. In the absence of evidence that the Turner framework does not adequately channel the discretion of federal courts, there would be no reason to toughen standing doctrine to provide an additional, and perhaps unnecessary, protection against this danger.
But instead of relying on these reasonable and existing safeguards against interference, the Court's resolution of this case forces a district court to engage in extensive and, I believe, needless enquiries into the underlying merit of prisoners' claims during the initial and final stages of a trial, and renders properly certified classes vulnerable to constant challenges throughout the course of litigation. The risk is that district courts will simply conclude that prisoner class actions are unmanageable. What, at the least, the Court overlooks is that a class action lending itself to a systemwide order of relief consistent with Turner avoids the multiplicity of separate suits and remedial orders that undermine the efficiency of a United States district court just as surely as it can exhaust the legal resources of a much-sued state prison system.
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