A lawsuit filed by Maria’s Bookshop against the city of Durango and a police detective over a demand for records of a customer’s book purchases is now essentially defunct.
On Thursday, Senior Judge Douglas Walker entered a permanent injunction stopping the Durango police from obtaining the requested records without a court hearing.
The case cast a spotlight on the conflict that can arise between privacy rights and the need for information in criminal cases.
In an online statement, the city said the case involves “potential sex crimes against a minor.”
According to the complaint filed by Maria’s on Feb. 20 in District Court, Durango Detective Sydney Walters came to the store in early January seeking the records of one customer’s purchases.
“Consistent with the bookstore’s longstanding and mandatory policy to maintain the privacy of customer records, a policy that is a condition of employment for every staff member and is required to be signed by every employee, Maria’s Bookstore declined Detective Walters’ request,” the complaint states.
But on Jan. 15, a judge ordered the records to be released, leading to the lawsuit.
On Feb. 23, Colorado District Judge Nathaniel Baca granted a temporary restraining order blocking the search.
Baca wrote, “Maria’s Bookshop has demonstrated that it has a reasonable probability of success on its claim that no seizure of book-purchase records may be enforced absent a pre-seizure adversarial hearing at which the defendants meet the constitutional strict scrutiny requirements of showing a compelling government interest that is so great that it overcomes the harm to the constitutional interests in free expression and privacy that flow from the government’s intrusion, and that there are no other reasonable alternative methods of meeting the government’s asserted need, that the seizure would not be unduly broad, and that the seizure is unrelated to the content of the books bought by any particular customer.”
The right to keep book purchases private without the entity seeking those records first having to undergo strict scrutiny has been upheld both in federal court and in Colorado.
In 1998, prosecutor Kenneth Starr subpoenaed Monica Lewinsky’s book purchases from two bookstores in Washington, D.C., but a U.S. district judge rejected his request, saying he first had to show “a compelling need” for the information.
In 2002, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in Tattered Cover v. City of Thornton that a constitutional review must be done before book-purchase records can be obtained.
At Thursday’s hearing in Durango, both sides consented to the permanent injunction against the release.
In a phone interview, Durango city attorney Mark Morgan told KSJD that the earlier warrant to release the records should not have been issued without a contradictory hearing.
“If we want to get this information, we will do it the right way,” he said.
He said even though the city police did not receive the requested records, the criminal investigation is ongoing.
As far as the lawsuit filed by Maria’s, Morgan said, “Essentially the case is over. It’s still out there but there’s nothing left to do with it.”
Gail Binkly is a career journalist who has worked for the Colorado Springs Gazette and Cortez Journal, and was the editor of the Four Corners Free Press, based in Cortez.