A North Texas jail is changing its mail intake procedures after a lawsuit from a nonprofit prison advocacy group accused the sheriff’s office of withholding its books and magazines from inmates.
Grayson County and its sheriff, Tom Watt, filed a supplement Friday to its response to an application for a preliminary injunction after a hearing last week before U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant in Sherman.
According to the plaintiff, Florida-based Human Rights Defense Center, packages it mailed, including magazines Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News, were rejected and returned to sender without any recourse for appealing the jail’s decisions.
The packages were returned with handwritten notes on the outside stating “Contents Not Allowed/No Books,” “No Stapled Articles Allowed” and other similarly brief comments, according to the lawsuit.
The advocacy group asked the judge to order jail administrators to cease enforcement of “unconstitutional censorship policies and practices” and to provide the organization with “due process” when administrators block its packages. The judge has not issued a ruling.
In its initial response, the county and sheriff contended that requiring jail staff to remove staples from all publications it received and to allow the literature in the cells would burden jail staff resources and impose logistical and safety issues.
The judge asked questions of both sides about the threats posed by staples, why the jail staff should be ordered to remove the staples and whether other jail staffs removed staples from mail to inmates, lawyers for the advocacy group told The Texas Lawbook after the hearing.
The defendants reversed course in their supplemental filing Friday, agreeing to remove staples. The advocacy group’s publications will be delivered to the inmates they’re mailed to and the organization will have an opportunity to appeal the rejection of any items, the supplement states.
“Grayson County jail is willing to review issues and adjust its policy accordingly,” the response states, noting the issue has been unique to the Human Rights Defense Center.
Timothy S. Durst, an O’Melveny & Meyers partner representing the advocacy group pro bono, said the Human Rights Defense Center is evaluating the case and next steps.
The lawsuit was filed in September.
Grayson County and Sheriff Watt are represented by James C. Tidwell of Wolfe, Tidwell & McCoy in Sherman. Tidwell did not respond to The Lawbook’s request for comment.
The Human Rights Defense Center is also represented by Don Olmos, Frances Mackay and Brandon Duke of O’Melveny & Meyers, as well as Peter B. Steffensen and Thomas S. Leatherbury of Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law and students.