Can Hawaii prison officials impose their personal moral views in deciding whether or not to grant marriage applications to inmates?

That question is at the heart of a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Honolulu by the ACLU of Hawaii.

The case, filed Tuesday, alleges that Public Safety Director Jodie Maesaka-Hirata, mainland prison branch administrator Shari Kimoto and mainland prison contract monitor Jeanette Baltero discriminated against four women who applied numerous times to be married but were denied being allowed to wed their fiancés.

The men are all incarcerated at the Saguaro Correctional Facility in Eloy, Ariz.

The ACLU said state officials repeatedly sent the prisoners a form letter denying the marriage application because, according to the lawsuit, the men “are incapable of providing the necessary emotional, financial and physical support that every marriage needs in order to succeed.”

Toni Schwartz, spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety, told Civil Beat, “We have not been served any court documents yet. We have to reserve comment until we have had time to look it over with our Deputy Attorney General assigned to the legal matter.”

But the ACLU was not so circumspect. Daniel Gluck, ACLU senior staff attorney, said in a statement, “The Constitution prohibits government officials from imposing their morals and judgment on others. DPS’s practices are not only illegal — they hinder prisoners from developing committed relationships that can help their rehabilitation and improve their chances of being productive when they complete their sentences and re-enter society.”

Reached by phone late Tuesday, Gluck told Civil Beat he had just filed for a preliminary injunction asking the court “to immediately issue an order to allow our plaintiffs to get married.”

Ailing Fiancé On ‘God’s Time’

Tuesday’s filing follows an ACLU action 18 months ago against some of the same defendants for allegedly denying a marriage application using the same form letter.

The ACLU said the state agreed then to stop the practice, allowed a couple to wed and issued a policy on marriage applications.

But the ACLU says the practice has continued, something it says the U.S. Supreme Court ruled was unconstitutional in 1987.

The ACLU quotes Lenora Santos, one of the plaintiffs, saying, “We just want to get married because we love each other. We’ve been trying for years. We gave up on the system, but we never gave up on each other.”

The other plaintiffs, according to the lawsuit, are Junell Faith Aliviado, Jamiquia Glass and Margaret Amina. The suit argues that the state’s denial is causing the women “emotional distress, psychological harm, pain, suffering and humiliation.”

The ACLU said some of the plaintiffs were given additional “baseless excuses” when they tried to appeal the decisions.

Excerpt from the lawsuit:

Plaintiff SANTOS describes her fiancé as being her “first love” from when she was thirteen years old. The two parted ways for a long time, but reunited after approximately thirty years. They have been together as a couple for approximately eight years. Plaintiff SANTOS and her fiancé have a daughter together who is now thirty-seven years old.

The lawsuit adds that the couple — the men are not named in the lawsuit — talk frequently by phone and have a video conference once a month, but that Santos has bone cancer and cannot travel to Arizona. She declares that she is living on “God’s time.”

Prisoners Can Marry

It’s not clear how many Hawaii prisoners get married.

But DPS policy does indeed allow wardens to approve those marriages under certain circumstances.

Hawaii currently houses about 1,800 inmates in two Arizona prisons because it does not have the prison space here at home, something the Abercrombie administration hopes to change through its “justice reinvestment” initiative.

The ACLU’s lawsuit against DPS is its second in three months.

In February it filed a civil suit over the death of a Hawaii inmate at Saguaro, which is operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison contractor.