Louisiana Prisoner Granted Preliminary Injunction in Challenge to Jail Book Ban
by Chuck Sharman
Finding that the “library” at Tensas Parish Detention Center (TPDC) “is nothing more than a nominal designation,” the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana granted a prisoner’s request for a preliminary injunction on February 19, 2025, forcing Warden Nolan Bass “to allow publications and books to be received directly from the vendor.”
The complaint was filed by prisoner Thomas Normand, who—like nearly half of all state prisoners—is held at a parish jail for want of space in overcrowded lockups run by the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC). “Despite four years of making such requests” for reading material since his arrival at TPDC in 2020, “he has not received a single publication,” the district court recalled.
Bass and fellow Defendant Robert Rushing, the Parish Sheriff, claimed that this was not a de facto ban on reading materials because the jail maintained a library stocked with donated books as an alternative. However, at a hearing on the preliminary injunction motion in January 2025, Normand and fellow prisoners all testified that this wasn’t’ true, and they had no direct access to the library.
The district court agreed that “TPDC’s ‘library’ is nothing more than a nominal designation—there is no established process for inmates to check out books,” and “multiple prisoners” corroborated Normand’s testimony that “repeated requests for reading materials have gone unanswered for years.”
Defendants defaulted to a common defense in such cases, claiming that letting prisoners get publications in the mail would lead to more contraband drugs in the jail. The district court did not question this, but it said that “Defendants have not shown that allowing books from approved vendors would pose an insurmountable burden or risk.”
In fact, Bass and Rushing admitted that the jail library had just received a large donation of books, undermining their claims that letting prisoners order books “would require additional staffing or pose a security risk,” the district court continued. Rather, it said, “those concerns are mitigated by the fact that TPDC already claims to possess a reading library.”
Examining the case under guidelines established in Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987), the district court found that “Defendants have articulated a legitimate penological interest in banning inmates from receiving books through the mail,” but they had failed to show that an alternative means existed or that accommodating Plaintiffs would overburdern their resources—especially when Plaintiffs proposed “easy alternatives,” such as “allowing access to the library” or “TPDC accepting publications through the mail from approved vendors.”
That also established Plaintiffs’ likelihood of succeeding on the merits of their claim, the first factor necessary for a preliminary injunction. The second factor, that Normand faced a substantial threat of irreparable injury, was also established because “[t]he loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury,” as held in Elrod v. Burns, 427 U.S. 347 (1976).
The third factor, that the balance of harms weighs in Normand’s favor, was also satisfied. “While Defendants argue that unrestricted access to mailed publications poses a security risk,” the district court said that it was “not ordering such unrestricted access,” but would rather “tailor its order to minimize the burden on Defendants.”
As for the fourth and final factor, the district court said that public interest was also favored by an injunction because “[i]njunctions … protecting First Amendment freedoms are always in the public interest,” citing Opulent Life Church v. City of Holly Springs, 697 F.3d 279 (5th Cir. 2012) (quoting Christian Legal Soc’y v. Walker, 453 F.3d 853 (7th Cir. 2006)).
Accordingly, a preliminary injunction was granted requiring TPDC to open its library to prisoners, with published procedures for requesting or checking out books, and the jail must also publish a “policy on requesting publications, including whether and under what conditions inmates may receive … books or other reading materials through the mail.”
Normand was represented by attorneys Katharine M. Schwartzmann, Anna Cleveland, Katherine V. Eckrote and Richard Crow of the Tulane University Law School First Amendment Clinic in New Orleans. See: Normand v. Bass, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 29923 (W.D. La.).
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Related legal case
Normand v. Bass
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 29923 (W.D. La.) |
| Level | District Court |