Counsel for Avid Bookshop, an independent Athens bookseller, argued in a recent federal court filing that a motion to dismiss the shop’s challenge to a Gwinnett County Jail book shipment policy should be denied.
Avid Bookshop filed suit against Gwinnett County Sheriff Keybo Taylor and Gwinnett County Jail Commander Benjamin Haynes earlier this year in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. The lawsuit, filed on grounds of free speech and due process of law, seeks a jury trial on issues related to the county jail’s policy for having books shipped to inmates from limited sellers.
The lawsuit was filed in connection with two incidents in 2023 in which books purchased at Avid Bookshop were returned to their purchasers from the Gwinnett County Jail. Also noted in the lawsuit is a third 2023 incident in which a book sent to the jail directly from Avid Bookshop on behalf of a customer was also returned.
The Gwinnett County Jail book policy limits book shipments to the jail to authorized retailers, effectively banning brick-and-mortar bookstores like Avid Bookshop from exercising their First Amendment rights, the bookseller’s legal action contends. The bookshop’s filing also contends that the jail has no guidance or process for it, or other brick-and-mortar booksellers, to become authorized retailers.
As a practical matter, the Gwinnett County Jail’s authorized retailer policy has meant that only books shipped from two online sellers, Amazon and Barnes & Noble, are accepted at the jail.
In their May response to the Avid Bookshop lawsuit, Taylor and Haynes, represented by counsel outside the county government, contend that the policy is in place to reduce the risk of contraband entering the jail.
The two officials’ motion to dismiss the case goes on to contend that if Avid Bookshop were allowed to become an authorized retailer, the jail would have to allow similar exceptions for other brick-and-mortar booksellers.
Eventually, the dismissal motion contends, the jail could be put in the untenable position of having to inspect all bookstores, no matter where they might be located, wanting to send books to inmates at the jail.
In the July 2 filing urging the federal district court to reject the Gwinnett County officials’ motion for dismissal, Avid’s counsel – Atlanta attorney Jeff Greenamyre, and Claire Norins, director of the First Amendment Clinic at the University of Georgia School of Law, with help from clinic students – cites a 2023 report from PEN America, a nonprofit organization working to protect free expression.
According to the report, PEN America found a marked increase in recent years in the number of prisons limiting the number of booksellers allowed to send books to prisoners to a handful of approved vendors.
In 2015, according to the PEN report, “30 percent of prisons wouldn’t allow books from nonprofits, independent bookstores, family and friends.” By 2023, the report noted, “84 percent of prisons surveyed now require that books are purchased from vendors the state or specific prisons opaquely select without publishing criteria for their choices or providing steps for booksellers to become approved.”
Addressing the jail’s authorized retailer policy, Avid Bookshop’s attempt to have the court deny Gwinnett County’s motion to dismiss the case takes specific note of the vagueness of the policy for book shipments.
Quoting a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Avid Bookshop’s filing notes that a “vague law impermissibly delegates basic policy matters to (government officials) for resolution on an ad hoc and subjective basis, with the attendant dangers of arbitrary and discriminatory application.”
Regarding First Amendment free speech protections, Avid Bookshop’s filing this week contends that in the process of helping customers select books for shipment to inmates, “Avid uses the ideas and writings of others to form its own messages, which are unique expression that Avid has a protected interest in disseminating to the public, including to individuals in jail.”
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