Cite as: 532 U. S. 223 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
phy violated due process, the rights of inmates to access the courts, and, as relevant here, Murphy's First Amendment rights, including the right to provide legal assistance to other inmates.
After discovery, the District Court granted petitioners' motion for summary judgment on all of Murphy's claims. On the First Amendment claim, the court found that Murphy was not formally acting as an inmate law clerk when he wrote the letter, and that Murphy's claims should therefore "be analyzed without consideration of any privilege that law clerk status might provide." App. to Pet. for Cert. 24. The District Court then applied our decision in Turner v. Safley, 482 U. S. 78 (1987), which held that a prison regulation impinging on inmates' constitutional rights is valid "if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests," id., at 89. Finding a "valid, rational connection between the prison inmate correspondence policy and the objectives of prison order, security, and inmate rehabilitation," the District Court rejected Murphy's First Amendment claim. App. to Pet. for Cert. 25.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed. It premised its analysis on the proposition that "inmates have a First Amendment right to assist other inmates with their legal claims." 195 F. 3d 1121, 1124 (1999). Murphy enjoyed this right of association, the court concluded, because he was providing legal advice that potentially was relevant to Tracy's defense. The Court of Appeals then applied our decision in Turner, but it did so only against the backdrop of this First Amendment right, which, the court held, affected the balance of the prisoner's interests against the govern-ment's interests. Concluding that the balance tipped in favor of Murphy, the Court of Appeals upheld Murphy's First Amendment claim.
Other Courts of Appeals have rejected similar claims. See, e. g., Gibbs v. Hopkins, 10 F. 3d 373, 378 (CA6 1993) (no constitutional right to assist other inmates with legal
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