After a legal whirlwind that played out over the past couple of months in Colorado, Maria’s Bookshop appears to have emerged victorious in its clash with the city of Durango. Colorado Senior Judge Douglas Walker granted a permanent injunction on February 26, 2026, against the Durango Police Department’s (DPD) attempt to use a court order to compel the release of book-purchase records about particular customers being investigated for a sex crime. Soon after, Durango City attorney Mark Morgan agreed with the decision that the warrant shouldn’t have been issued. A judge had issued a temporary restraining order against Durango law enforcement two days earlier, prohibiting them from using the warrant.
Maria’s Bookshop, a stout defender of First Amendment free speech rights, has a policy forbidding the sharing of any customer's purchase history. It’s based on a previous Colorado Supreme Court ruling, as well as on provisions of the Colorado Constitution that apply strict scrutiny when deciding whether the government’s compelling interest in private information outweighs any potential harm to a citizen’s rights. While Morgan acknowledged that there should have been an adversarial hearing over the granting of the warrant, he also hinted that the Durango city attorney’s office would continue trying to gain access to the customer records.
Pretty Sure You’ll Find Multiple Copies of “1984” Available for Purchase
Now in its 42nd year of operation, Maria’s Bookshop is an independently owned bookstore in southwest Colorado with more than 40,000 books on its shelves. In addition to being part of the American Booksellers Association, Maria’s Bookshop is a member of the American Booksellers for Free Expression, which was created in response to perceived threats against First Amendment rights embodied by the USA Patriot Act of 2001.
Maria’s Bookshop has a longstanding customer privacy policy in place, which all its employees must read and sign off on. It’s based on the 2002 Colorado Supreme Court decision in Tattered Cover Bookstore v. City of Thornton, which concerned a similar case involving a police warrant requesting a bookstore’s customer purchase information. The court ruled in favor of Tattered Cover, setting precedent for both Maria’s privacy policy and its legal moves to enforce it.
In early January 2026, Durango Detective Sydney Walters requested purchase information about a customer from the staff of Maria’s Bookshop. When the staff refused, citing the store’s privacy policy, Walters obtained a court order requiring the store to provide purchase histories and account information for four customers and two accounts over a four-month period. Since Walters did not supply the affidavit used to establish probable cause or include the bookstore in a court hearing to obtain it, the staff refused to honor the search warrant.
Détente
Attorneys for Maria’s Bookshop cited the guidelines spawned by Tattered Cover to argue that Durango hadn’t met their burden. Under Colorado law, seizure of book-purchase records requires the government to prove that its interest overcomes the harm to the constitutional interests in free expression and privacy, that there are no other reasonable alternative methods available, that the seizure would not be unduly broad, and that the seizure is unrelated to the content of the purchased books. Otherwise, a contradictory hearing must be held.
Since there was no adversarial hearing, the district court judges ruled that, according to Tattered Cover, there was a likely chance that Maria’s Bookshop would win its challenge. In a bit of a surprise, Morgan agreed with the decision, admitting the Durango received a warrant that it shouldn’t have. Noting that the requested materials were for a sex crime investigation with a minor as a victim, Morgan and the attorney for Maria’s Bookshop are negotiating to determine if some sort of balance can be struck between First Amendment protections and sharing information on a suspect.
Related Resources
- What Is the “Reasonable Expectation of Privacy?” (FindLaw’s Torts and Personal Injury Law)
- Not-So-Free-Speech: 5 Limits on First Amendment Rights (FindLaw’s Law and Daily Life)
- Personnel Policies FAQ (FindLaw’s Employment Law and Human Resources)
