HRDC Sues New Mexico County for Violating 10-Year-Old Settlement of Censorship Suit
by Chuck Sharman
A decade after PLN secured a settlement halting censorship of soft-cover books at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in New Mexico’s Bernalillo County, its nonprofit publisher headed back to court on December 4, 2025, challenging new jail rules that violate the earlier agreement and the First Amendment rights of the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC)—which, in addition to PLN, also publishes Criminal Legal News and distributes books for the incarcerated like Protecting Your Health and Safety.
The agreement executed in November 2015 concluded a challenge that PLN brought in state court against the County’s ban on soft-cover books. As reported then, jail officials agreed to “deliver soft cover books sent through the mail directly to individual prisoners at MDC as long as the books are sent from publishers and other book distributors”; they further agreed to provide notice when any books were censored, plus an appeal process, and they paid $235,000 in damages, attorneys’ fees and costs. [See: PLN, Jan. 2016, p.28.]
Proving what American abolitionist Wendell Phillips said in 1852, that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” HRDC was forced to head to federal court on December 4, 2025, after 160 items mailed to detainees at the jail were returned, many marked “TRANSITIONED TO A DIGITAL MAIL SYSTEM”—as if that amounts to a sufficient explanation. It is not, but even if it was, HRDC believes that many more items were rejected and not returned at all.
Accusing the County of violating its earlier agreement, the new suit notes that the MDC website now declares: “Publications are not accepted and will be returned to the sender.” Though there is a promise that “the intended recipient will be notified,” there is no notice provided to senders. The ban is complete, covering “books, magazines, newspapers, periodicals, journals, and newsletters.”
Just like the 2015 ban, this one violates HRDC’s First Amendment free speech rights, the suit declares. It also violates the nonprofit’s Fourteenth Amendment due process rights by providing no notice to senders when their material is rejected, nor any opportunity to appeal the censorship decision. The suit seeks declaratory and injunctive relief, plus punitive damages and attorneys costs and fees.
The case remains open, and PLN will provide updates as it progresses. HRDC is represented by attorneys Laura Schauer Ives in Albuquerque and Ernest Galvan and Benjamin Bien-Kahn with Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP in San Francisco, as well as in-house Litigation Director Jonathan P. Picard. See: Human Rts. Def. Ctr. v. Cty. of Bernalillo, USDC (D.N.M.), Case No. 1:25-cv-01208.
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Related legal case
Human Rts. Def. Ctr. v. Cty. of Bernalillo
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (D.N.M.), Case No. 1:25-cv-01208 |
| Level | District Court |