Cite as: 539 U. S. 126 (2003)
Thomas, J., concurring in judgment
the determination of a predicate state-law question, federal courts should ordinarily abstain from passing on the federal issue. Railroad Comm'n of Tex. v. Pullman Co., 312 U. S. 496 (1941). Here, if the prisoners' lawful sentences encompassed the extinction of any right to intimate association as a matter of state law, all that would remain would be respondents' (meritless, see Part II, infra) Eighth Amendment claim. Petitioners have not asked this Court to abstain under Pullman, and the issue of Pullman abstention was not considered below. As a result, petitioners have, in this case, submitted to the sort of guesswork about the meaning of prison sentences that is the hallmark of the Turner inquiry. Here, furthermore, Pullman abstention seems unnecessary because respondents make no effort to show that the sentences imposed on them did not extinguish the right they now seek to enforce. And for good reason.
It is highly doubtful that, while sentencing each respondent to imprisonment, the State of Michigan intended to permit him to have any right of access to visitors. Such access seems entirely inconsistent with Michigan's goal of segregating a criminal from society, see Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471, 482 (1972) (incarceration by design intrudes on the freedom "to be with family and friends and to form the other enduring attachments of normal life"); cf. Olim v. Wakinekona, 461 U. S. 238 (1983) (upholding incarceration several hours of flight away from home).
B
Though the question whether the State of Michigan intended to confer upon respondents a right to receive visitors is ultimately for the State itself to answer, it must nonetheless be confronted in this case. The Court's Turner analysis strongly suggests that the asserted rights were extinguished by the State of Michigan in incarcerating respondents. Restrictions that are rationally connected to the running of a prison, that are designed to avoid adverse impacts on guards,
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