According to a complaint filed today, the DOC has rejected Prison Legal News off-and-on since 2005 because of conflicts with the nonprofit newsletter's advertisers. PLN features advertisements for pen-pal agencies and third-party phone call providers, services that are banned in Florida prisons for security reasons.
But associate editor -- and former prisoner -- Alex Friedmann says the FDOC is really reacting to the investigative work and legal advice the magazine publishes. "We report on civil rights abuses, including by the Florida DOC," Freidmann says. "The prison system would prefer that [prisoners] not get that information."
PLN's suit was filed with the help of the ACLU of Florida. The magazine will argue that it's being unlawfully censored and that you can't ban a publication simply for advertising products not allowed in prison.
"We're a national news publication," Friedmann says. "We can't tailor our ad content to one particular state. Florida's not banning Time or Newsweek because they have advertisers for cigarettes or cars, though prisoners aren't allowed to have those either."
PLN is used to battling its way into prisons. It filed a similar suit in Arizona, which prompted prison officials there to claim the publication had been accidentally banned.
And it also has an ongoing suit in New York, where PLN has been outlawed because it accepts stamps as payment for subscriptions -- a violation of that state's prison rules.
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