A Victory For Readers...

It's taken two years but Denver's famed Tattered Cover bookstore has won a
critical victory protecting the privacy of readers. In a unanimous
decision, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that both the First Amendment
and that state's Constitution "protect an individual's fundamental right to
purchase books anonymously, free from government interference," according
to a report in the New York Times earlier this week.

The case stemmed from drug enforcement agents' discovery of two books about
home drug manufacturing at the site of a methamphetamine laboratory in a
Denver suburb. An envelope with the Tattered Cover's return address was
found outside the lab, leading the agents to request bookstore owner Joyce
Meskis turn over the store's receipts.

The case has been closely watched by booksellers, civil libertarians and
the police nationwide. Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers
Foundation for Free Expression, declared "this is a very, very important
decision because it is the strongest opinion on the issue of protecting
customer privacy in bookstores that has come down so far." The nonprofit
foundation filed a friend-of-the-court brief and helped raise funds to
cover the bookstore's legal fees.

The court declared that a hearing had to be held before any search warrant
could be executed on a bookstore when the store itself was not the subject
of a police investigation. In addition it repeatedly referred to the
"chilling effect" of issuing warrants without such hearings.

Meskis says she took the case all the way to the top state court because
"there is an implied understanding when an individual goes into a library
or to a bookstore with the respect to the privacy of their reading material."

The court's ruling means that that "understanding" is now more than
implied. This is the legal precedent that will give other bookstores
something more than just the nerve to say no to such requests.