After the Arkansas Department of Corrections (DOC) reached a settlement with state prisoner Anthony Lamar in his retaliation claim against officials at the Varner Unit, the federal court for the Eastern District of Arkansas granted the parties’ joint stipulation to dismiss the suit on March 10, 2025. Driving the DOC to the settlement table was an August 2024 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, reviving Lamar’s challenge to disciplinary measures he was subjected to after he tried to organize fellow prisoners to oppose a policy limiting non-legal mail.

Earlier, Lamar was also a lead plaintiff in a successful class-action challenge to DOC’s confiscation of prisoners’ COVID-19 stimulus payments received during the pandemic. As PLN reported, the same district court ultimately granted an injunction in that suit in 2022, forcing DOC to return over $2.5 million taken from state prisoners. [See: PLN, Oct. 2022, p.62.]

Before that, Lamar got notice in 2017 of the new DOC mail directive, limiting non-legal mail to just three pages. The stated reason was to stem the flow of illegal drugs into state prisons. But Lamar found it unreasonably restrictive. He drafted a petition and copied it on Law Library equipment, posting it in prison housing areas to encourage fellow prisoners to file grievances on this issue and follow up on them until they were fully exhausted—a prerequisite to filing suit under the Prison Litigation Reform Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e. He even offered to help them, encouraging them to unite “peacefully” to defeat this “unconstitutional policy.”

“The more fully exhausted grievances and notarized affidavits with your name and ADC numbers on them,” his notice said, “the better my chances become at winning” the lawsuit he planned to challenge the mail policy.

Warden James Gibson ordered Lt. Yolanda Linsy to investigate. The guard and Lamar had a history; he had just filed a grievance against her for not signing a separate grievance for him. On August 30, 2017, Linsy charged Lamar with “direct involvement” in “a petition, letter, or similar declaration that poses a threat to the security of the facility,” as well as “[u]nauthorized use of state property/supplies” for using the Law Library equipment. Those charges were later dismissed, though, because Linsy flubbed the charging document, omitting required information about the dates she began and ended her underlying investigation.

Meanwhile, Lamar was placed in disciplinary segregation. Linsy’s charges were dropped days later. But he was nevertheless denied a move to less restrictive housing. During the classification committee meeting on September 14, 2017, Lamar threatened to sue prison officials for retaliation. As the Eighth Circuit later recalled, “an exchange” with Warden Gibson brought the meeting to an abrupt end, and Lamar remained in segregation. When Gibson released him on September 20, 2017, the stated reason was to make more space for other prisoners.

In 2018, Lamar made good on his threat and filed suit in the district court pro se, accusing DOC officials of retaliating against him for his organizing and grievance-filing—activity protected by the First Amendment. Defendants didn’t attempt to dispute that. But they pointed to Eighth Circuit precedent that allows a retaliation claim to be dismissed so long as there is “some evidence” that prison officials were responding to a real infraction of prison rules. Because Linsy had charged Lamar with rule-breaking, DOC offered her charging document as “some evidence.” That was enough for the district court to grant Defendants summary judgment.

Lamar appealed, and the Eighth Circuit reversed that decision on August 5, 2024. The appellate Court began by noting that the First Amendment “prohibits government officials from subjecting individuals to ‘retaliatory actions’ after the fact for having engaged in protected speech,’” quoting Aldridge v. City of St. Louis, 75 F.4th 895 (8th Cir. 2023). A prisoner filing a retaliation claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 must show “(1) that he engaged in a protected activity; (2) that the government official took adverse action against him that would chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing in the activity; and (3) that the adverse action was motivated at least in part by the exercise of the protected activity”—all as laid out in Santiago v. Blair, 707 F.3d 984 (8th Cir. 2013).

DOC Defendants had not disputed this at the district court. But the Eighth Circuit took time to make clear that circulating the memo to other prisoners was “protected conduct,” absent “a security concern for the prison,” as held in Nickens v. White, 622 F.2d 967 (8th Cir. 1980), and more recently in Rouse v. Benson, 193 F.3d 936 (8th Cir. 1999). Linsy accused Lamar of “encourag[ing] the Inmate population to band together in order to disrupt unit operation.” But Lamar’s memo urged his fellow prisoners “to ‘peacefully’ band together to challenge the administrative directive,” the Court recalled, suggesting no intent to create the “security concern” that Linsy accused him of creating.

For that he then suffered an “adverse reaction”—disciplinary segregation—which was sufficient to “chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing,” the Court said. And all of that “was motivated at least in part” by the memo that he wrote and circulated. This would be enough for a jury to find Defendants guilty of retaliating against Lamar for his protected activity, too, unless he committed an “actual violation of a prison rule,” borrowing a phrase from Santiago.

But Linsy’s charge offered no proof of that; it was dismissed on procedural grounds, the Court noted, meaning “no impartial decision-maker reviewed the violation.” Simply put, Linsy’s charge had no legal effect after it was withdrawn—so there was no way it could provide “some evidence” to justify Lamar’s discipline. Since Defendants had already conceded that his activity preceding the punishment was constitutionally protected, a jury could reasonably infer from the events following that the motivation to discipline Lamar was retaliatory, the Court declared. The district court’s decision was therefore vacated and the case remanded. Before the Court—incredibly—Lamar proceeded and made these arguments pro se. See: Lamar v. Payne, 111 F.4th 902 (8th Cir. 2024).

Back at the district court, he was appointed counsel from Helena attorney William K. Stoner. The parties then proceeded to reach their settlement agreement. It was not docketed, however, and an Arkansas public records request can be enforced only by a resident, which PLN is not; regrettably, therefore, details of the agreement were not able to be inspected and reported. Nonetheless, Lamar is to be congratulated for the successful prosecution of his claim. See: Lamar v. Payne, USDC (E.D. Ark.), Case No. 5:18-cv-00292.  

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