by Chuck Sharman

The U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota granted an injunction on August 14, 2026, to the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC), nonprofit publisher of PLN and Criminal Legal News, ordering the state Department of Corrections (DOC) to modify a publications policy that censored HRDC publications sent to state prisoners.

The disputed policy went into effect in October 2024, barring receipt of any publications not sent from a short list of three “approved vendors.” The DOC insisted that this was necessary to prevent drugs from being sprayed onto the pages of books and mailed to prisoners.

HRDC wrote the following month, asking the DOC to rescind the new policy, but it got no reply. The DOC then expanded its approved vendor list in March 2025, dropping a vendor later the same month when it discovered that the publisher did not mail its own publications but used a third-party fulfillment service. Several newly added vendors were nonprofits, like HRDC, and the policy announcement said that “[a]ny additional nonprofits wishing to donate books to incarcerated individuals will be reviewed by the Deputy Assistant Commissioner of Teaching and Learning.”

Between March and November 2025, HRDC sent copies of several books to state prisoners, 53 of which were marked “unauthorized vendor” and returned; another 69 were sent but neither delivered nor returned. The DOC eventually posted a vendor application form on its website in February 2026. But that was a month after HRDC filed suit in the district court.

The nonprofit then moved for a preliminary injunction in May 2026, seeking to enjoin the DOC from censoring its publications and force it to “advise HRDC of the grounds for any disapproval, rejection, or refusal to deliver publications,” as the district court later recalled. Its ruling then partially granted the request, “order[ing] Defendants to issue a modified vendor application form and to develop and share guidelines indicating how vendors are reviewed.”

The district court first examined the policy under four factors for judging prison censorship laid out in Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987). The first requires both a legitimate penological interest and its rational connection to the challenged rule or regulation. The district court found the former in the DOC’s justification for the policy—to prevent drug-soaked publications from being mailed to prisoners—without asking for any data to back up the claim.

But the prison system never published any guidelines for placement on the approved vendor list. Without “guidelines in place to prevent the reviewers from drawing distinctions between publications based on content,” there was no way for the DOC to establish a rational connection to the legitimate penological purpose.

Moving to the second Turner factor, the district court noted the parties’ dispute over alternative means available to HRDC. The DOC insisted that the nonprofit could apply to be an approved vendor, or it could simply donate its books to the prison library system. But the district court agreed with HRDC that its books were too long for a library system like the DOC’s, which makes photocopies of materials for prisoners’ use. It also agreed that the vendor application form asked overly burdensome questions—such as inquiries about HRDC’s history of censorship with other corrections systems—which had no bearing on whether its publications were fulfilled by a third party (they are not).

The district court found for the DOC on the next Turner factor, agreeing that forcing the prison system to deliver publications sent from any vendor would constitute a “significant burden” and stymie its efforts to interdict contraband drugs. The last Turner factor was also resolved in the DOC’s favor, with the district court agreeing that the cost of screening publications sent from vendors was not de minimus, so that was not really a “readily available alternative.” In weighing both factors, however, the district court neither demanded nor cited any backup data, and DOC apparently offered none.

Nevertheless, the DOC’s failure on two of the four Turner factors was sufficient for the district court to find that HRDC would likely prevail on its First and Fourteenth Amendment claims. That also meant that the nonprofit met its next burden to obtain an injunction by identifying an “irreparable harm” it would suffer without one; as the district court noted, “[t]he violation of a First Amendment right is presumed to cause irreparable harm.”

The balance of equities might favor the DOC, the district court added, again deferring to prison officials’ unsubstantiated claims that drugs would otherwise flow into state prisons. But the public interest is served both by that and by protecting constitutional rights, so neither party won that point.

Accordingly, an injunction was issued giving the DOC 60 days to amend its vendor application form by eliminating “questions related to whether the applicant provides books to other facilities and whether the applicant has ever been denied permission to mail books or other material to a correctional facility.”

Within that same 60 days, the DOC must also publish “guidelines on the criteria to be used when deciding whether a book publisher or nonprofit will be approved or rejected.” Without then submitting an application, HRDC could not return to the district court in the matter—but the DOC had just 30 days from receipt of the application to approve or deny it, and it also must provide grounds for any disapproval. For six months, the DOC must also provide grounds for rejection of any other publisher who applies to be an approved lender.

HRDC was represented in its suit by attorneys Matthew K. Gillespie, Anna Ashley and Alex P. Hontos of Dorsey & Whitney in Minneapolis, along with in-house Litigation Director Jonathan P. Picard. See: Hum. Rts. Def. Ctr. v. Schnell, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 181954 (D. Minn.). 

Subscribe today

Already a subscriber? Login

Related legal case