Attorneys for one California prisoner say restricting access to email is a violation of First Amendment rights even for people behind bars.

Lawyers from San Quentin-based Prison Law Office Tuesday say they will fight a February 6 court ruling that says inmates can't receive email in any form, even if the material is printed out and sent to them by regular mail.

"The ruling means that I couldn't even show my client a copy of the opinion that was downloaded from the court's Web site," says Prison Law Office staff attorney Heather MacKay. "There is no difference between one piece of paper printed from the Internet and another piece of paper with the same information on it. I find it ironic that the ruling itself came with a cover letter announcing a new Web site for the court of appeals."

The ruling stems from MacKay's client Aaron Collins - an inmate at Pelican Bay State Prison in Northern California - who signed up with INMATE Classified, a Granada Hills-based Web hosting site which gives prisoners limited access to the Internet by hosting an inmate's personal Web pages and forwarding them hard copies of any email sent to an inmate.com address. Collins is one of more than 300 nationwide subscribers.

In 1998, Pelican Bay officials revised their policy and prohibited inmates from receiving anything originating from the Internet. Collins sued, arguing that his free speech rights were violated. The state courts agreed with Collins, until last week's appeal by the Pelican Bay warden changed that.

"We conclude that given the unique characteristics of email, the ban on receipt by regular mail of Internet-generated material was neither arbitrary nor irrational and was logically related to the prison's legitimate security concerns," says the decision by the California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, which overturned the lower court ruling."

Prison officials in general have objected to Internet and email access for inmates from the get-go saying that there are too many security risks and difficulties in sifting through things like spam.

In most cases, California prisoners have access to regular mail and Internet and email access for inmates varies from prison to prison. However, MacKay says the appeals court ruling last week could eventually cut off all email access to prisoners in the state.

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"I'm worried that this will give prison officials more fuel to restrict access," says MacKay. "Right now access for prisoners is a mixed bag, but that could change because other states are also restricting access for their inmates."

The lawyers have the support of the American Civil Liberties Union and INMATE Classified. The review of the case could start as soon as February 28.