by Chuck Sharman

On February 20, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico issued a preliminary injunction (PI) preventing the state Corrections Department (NMCD) from enforcing a blanket ban on magazines, which it announced in a 2021 memorandum sent to families of prisoners. Though the official NMCD mail policy has never been amended to incorporate the outright ban, and its enforcement has been scattershot, the district court found it had been applied to materials sent to prisoners by the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC)—the nonprofit publisher of PLN and Criminal Legal News—in violation of the First Amendment.

HRDC filed suit in 2024, after 300 of its publications were rejected at prisons run by the NMCD or its two privately contracted operators, The GEO Group (GEO) and Management and Training Corp. (MTC). Defendants replied that their official mail policy provided reasons for publications to be rejected, along with a system of notice to the publisher. But the policy provides no mechanism for appeal.

Moreover, the 2021 memo coincided with the beginning of the censorship that HRDC objected to, though the NMCD provided a reason for rejecting only four of the 300 mailings that were turned away. In addition to the memo, the Penitentiary of New Mexico sent a December 2022 letter stating this its prisoners “are not allowed to have any [p]ublications.”

After HRDC challenged the rejections of its mailings, NMCD Deputy General Counsel Brenden Murphy wrote to reiterate that “magazines are not allowed.” Yet in response to the nonprofit’s lawsuit, Defendants denied “any ongoing censorship of HRDC’s publications,” as the district court recalled. This maddening confusion—Was the publication ban official policy or not? Why were most of HRDC’s publications rejected?—prompted the requests for a PI.

The district court then applied the four-factor test laid out in Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. (1987). The first, which the district court said is “often described as ‘the most important,’” instructs the court to search for “a valid, rational connection between the challenged prion regulation and a legitimate and neutral governmental interest.” But since the NMCD cited no justification for rejecting HRDC’s publications, the district court could find no evidence that the mail policy was unconstitutional, either “facially or as applied.”

The same was not true of the 2021 memo, however. “Although both the Supreme Court and the Tenth Circuit have recognized prison security as a legitimate governmental objective, the first Turner factor requires more than a conclusory invocation of security concerns,” the district court declared. It called “tenuous” the NMCD’s justification—“that rigid materials cannot pass through the scanning equipment”—since it failed to explain how magazines could be rejected but thicker books were able to be processed. Nor did the memo explain how one type of publication threatens prison security while the other does not.

“NMCD facilities apply the 2021 Memorandum inconsistently and, in some instances, extend its stated prohibition beyond magazines,” the district court said. As a result, the prison system failed to “establish a coherent, rational connection between the scanner-based justification and the selective prohibition on magazines.”

The second Turner factor—“whether inmates have alternative means of exercising the asserted constitutional right”—weighed against HRDC, the district court said, since it could donate its publications to the prison library and bypass the mailroom altogether. However, the third factor weighed against NMCD, since the impact of processing the publications on prison resources was “de minimus.”

The fourth and final factor could not be fully analyzed, since no reason for rejection had been sent back with most of HRDC’s returned publications, leaving the district court unable to determine if that were an “exaggerated response” to legitimate penological concerns. But “Notes stating merely ‘Refused,’ ‘Returned to Sender,’ or ‘RTS’ do not supply enough information for a sender to understand why a mailing was rejected,” the district court declared.

Having concluded that the Turner factors favored HRDC, the district court found the necessary conditions for a PI—the nonprofit’s likelihood of prevailing on the merits of its case; the “irreparable harm” that HRDC would suffer without relief from the court; and the balance of equities, which weighed in its favor. An amended order issued on April 6, 2026, revised the PI to moot any claims against GEO, whose contract to operate its sole lockup in the state had expired and was not renewed. See: Hum. Rts. Def. Ctr. v. Grisham, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 35551 (D.N.M.); and 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76830 (D.N.M.).

The case remains open, and PLN will continue to update developments. HRDC is represented by in-house Litigation Director Jonathan Picard and attorneys Ernest Galvan, Marc J. Shinn-Krantz, Brenda Munoz and Benjamin Bien-Kahn of Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP in San Francisco, along with co-counsel from attorneys Adam C. Flores and Laura Schauer Ives of Ives & Flores, PA in Albuquerque. See: Hum. Rts. Def. Ctr. v. Grisham, USDC (D.N.M.), Case No. 1:24-cv-01091.

This is a separate suit from one that HRDC filed against Bernalillo County to challenge censorship of its publications at the County lockup in Albuquerque. The district court also granted the nonprofit’s request for a PI in that case in March 2026, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, May 2026, p.34.]  

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