Proch v. King
In the Eastern District of Michigan, our Access to Justice team is challenging another aspect of the profit-driven conspiracy between prison telecom company Securus and St. Clair County, Michigan to exploit incarcerated people and their families: restricting access to U.S. mail in favor of expensive messaging products provided by Securus. As in our Right to Hug cases, Securus extracts profits from a captive, vulnerable audience for services that were once accessible for low or no charge. When Securus contracts with a jail, policies eliminating alternatives to Securus’ products almost always follow, through explicit contractual terms or profit-sharing agreements that incentivize eliminating lower cost options. In this case, Proch v. King, after contracting with Securus to provide digital tablets with expensive messaging software in exchange for receiving a cut of the revenue from that software, the St. Clair County jail severely restricted access to U.S. Mail. In combination with the ban on in-person visitation challenged in our Right to Hug cases, the new restrictions on mail forced people at the Jail and their loved ones to rely on Securus’s costly messaging or calling products.
Our Debtors’ Prison Project team recently filed another class action in St. Clair County seeking to end the jail’s ban on in-person visitation. Their landmark suit was filed on behalf of the children who cannot see their incarcerated loved ones in person; instead they are forced to use Securus’ expensive, inferior video chat system. Sheriff Mat King and Securus are also named defendants in that suit.
Public Justice represents Taurean Proch, who originally filed the suit pro se. Mr. Proch sought to challenge St. Clair jail’s policy of limiting all U.S. Mail to only small plain postcards and destroying or returning mail that did not comply with the policy without providing notice to the recipient. As a result of that policy, Mr. Proch and other people at the Jail could not receive photos or art from their children, educational resources, or important documents through U.S. mail, forcing them to use Securus’s much more costly and inferior messaging, calling, and educational software.
Using the tablet to send and receive messages requires accepting “take-it-or-leave-it” Terms of Service that include a forced arbitration clause, which Securus used in an attempt to throw Mr. Proch’s complaint out of court. Private prison corporations regularly force consumers out of the civil justice system with these “agreements.” This strips consumers of the ability to meaningfully challenge unfair and exploitative practices and prevents them from filing class actions, an especially valuable tool for vulnerable communities.
Mr. Proch argued that no arbitration agreement had been formed because he not only needed to use the tablet to contact his family, but he also was required to use it to access basic jail services like medical care, filing grievances, and purchasing items from the commissary. A district court denied Securus’s motion to compel arbitration but ordered limited discovery on the arbitration issue, specifically concerning whether an “agreement” could have truly been formed between Securus and an incarcerated individual who does not have any alternative options. That’s when Public Justice began representing Mr. Proch. Shortly after, Securus withdrew its motion to compel Mr. Proch into arbitration, allowing the case to proceed in court.
On April 12, 2024, we sought leave to file an amended complaint on behalf of Mr. Proch and a class of similarly situated people, which explains the exploitative conspiracy between Securus and St. Clair County and seeks to end the postcard-only mail policy and declare it a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
