COURT OVERTURNS BOOK STORE ORDER

Colorado Bookstore Fought to Protect Customers' Privacy Rights

DENVER (April 8) - The Colorado Supreme Court refused to order a bookstore
to turn over its sales records to police on Monday, overturning a lower
court decision demanding the records as part of a drug investigation.

In a 53-page ruling, the court said police erred when they went after the
records to establish which books a suspect had purchased.

The First Amendment and the state Constitution "protect an individual's
fundamental right to purchase books anonymously, free from governmental
interference," the court ruled.

The decision overturns a Denver district judge who ordered Tattered Cover
Book Store owner Joyce Meskis to tell police who purchased two books on
drug manufacturing from her store.

Meskis argued that the order violated her customers' First Amendment rights.

Attorneys for police and prosecutors said the investigators had no other
way to prove who owned the book, which they said is critical to their
investigation.

Police sought the records after finding an envelope from the bookstore
outside a mobile home they had raided. Inside the home were a
methamphetamine lab and the drug-making how-to books.

The envelope was printed with an invoice number and the trailer's address,
but no name. Police found no fingerprints on the book and obtained a search
warrant to find out who ordered it. The court said Monday that the search
warrant should never have been issued.

The Tattered Cover, one of the country's largest independent bookstores,
was assisted in the case by the American Booksellers Foundation for Free
Expression.