A publisher of magazines and books for prison inmates, including “Prison Legal News,” is suing the state correctional system for blocking its publications from being mailed to inmates in Hawaiʻi prisons and jails, arguing the ban violates the publisher’s constitutional rights.

Jeffrey Portnoy, the Honolulu attorney for the nonprofit Human Rights Defense Center, said the publications it distributes are legal books and publications to help prisoners address problems such as what they should do if they believe their civil rights are being violated.

“None of it is like, how to make a bomb or how to lead a riot — none of it. Self-help is the best way for me to put it,” Portnoy said.

He said center staff members tried to find out why their publications were being rejected, and “they were stonewalled, they never heard a thing, nothing.”

The lawsuit filed Thursday describes the publications as constitutionally protected political speech, social commentary and educational material dealing with the rights of inmates.

The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the state Attorney General’s Office did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit Tuesday.

The mission of the nonprofit is to keep inmates informed about recent developments in law and the courts, and also about “protection of one’s health and personal safety while in prison or jail,” according to the filing.

“Reading materials enable incarcerated persons to engage in productive activity rather than sitting idle, thus helping to avoid conflicts and incidents of violence in correctional facilities and encouraging lawful methods of dispute resolution,” it said.

The lawsuit alleges the state has rejected HRDC’s publications 56 times since the spring of 2024, including issues of the monthly magazines “Prison Legal News” and “Criminal Legal News,” as well as copies of “Prisoners’ Guerrilla Handbook: A Guide To Correspondence Programs in the United States and Canada.”

The lawsuit alleges the publication policies of the Hawaiʻi correctional system are “unconstitutional on their face.”

It says corrections officials are violating the center’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech by censoring its publications, and also violating its due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment because it had no opportunity to appeal the censorship decision.

The center says in the filing it has been distributing its publications and books since 1990 to more than 3,000 correctional facilities nationally, including death row housing units and so-called “supermax” prisons.

The nonprofit said in a written statement it has successfully litigated similar censorship cases in prisons in 17 other states, including California, New York, Michigan and Illinois.

Portnoy said similar lawsuits are pending in three other states in the Midwest, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2022 ruled in favor of Prison Legal News in a similar case in Arizona. The federal court later ordered the state of Arizona to pay more than $2.37 million in legal fees and court costs in that case, he said.

The lawsuit asks the federal court to issue an injunction requiring Hawaiʻi corrections officials to lift the ban on the center’s publications, and also seeks damages.