A Florida-based nonprofit has filed a federal lawsuit against Lancaster County Prison officials, alleging they are unconstitutionally blocking the group’s magazines, books and letters from reaching prisoners.

In a legal complaint filed Thursday in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the Human Rights Defense Center alleges the prison’s policies and practices regarding prisoner mail “have resulted in a complete ban on books and magazines mailed by HRDC in violation of HRDC’s rights as a publisher under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.”

Since June 2025, the prisoner advocacy group has received 125 items of returned mail from the county prison, according to the complaint, including copies of their magazines Criminal Legal News and Prison Legal News and other informational guides for prisoners.

In its suit, the organization cites Lancaster County Prison policies regarding prisoner mail. The prison website states: “Effective June 2024 personal mail will no longer be accepted by the County Jail.” Below that statement are instructions for loved ones of prisoners to address personal mail to a digital mail processing center run by Texas-based Securus Technologies, the prison’s vendor for inmate telecommunication services.

Of the 125 items returned to HRDC, according to the complaint, 17 were returned by Securus after the organization mailed them to the company’s digital mail center.

Correctional facilities have increasingly been using digital technologies for communications between incarcerated people and family members on the outside, citing books, magazines, postcards and other physical materials as tools for smuggling contraband into a facility.

The policies note an exception for “legal mail,” which must be addressed directly to the prison and delivered unopened to prisoners “to ensure confidentiality.”

The complaint also alleges the nonprofit had no opportunity to appeal the prison’s denial of its mailed materials.

On Friday, Michael Fitzpatrick, spokesman for the Lancaster County Commissioners Office, wrote in an email that the county had not yet been served with the HRDC lawsuit.

Fitzpatrick did not respond to a request for comment Monday, which was a holiday for the county government. Lancaster County Warden Cheryl Steberger, one of the named defendants in the lawsuit, also did not respond to requests for comment.

The Human Rights Defense Center’s mission is to defend the human rights of people held in U.S. correctional facilities, according to its website. It has been publishing the monthly magazine Prison Legal News since 1990, and has pursued First Amendment litigation against correctional facilities for nearly as long, according to Paul Wright, the center’s executive director.

The suit against Lancaster County Prison marks the first lawsuit from the prisoner rights organization in Pennsylvania, Wright said, though similar policies limiting the distribution of personal mail to prisoners is not uncommon nationally.

“One of the goals we have with this litigation is to stop it from happening here, but also stop other places that are doing it as well, or are thinking about doing it,” Wright said Monday.

Most of the organization’s subscribers are in long-term facilities, like state and federal prisons, Wright said. But some state prisoners return to local prisons temporarily for various reasons, such as for a court hearing. In those cases, Wright said, subscribers may request their magazines be sent to their new location.