A Montana prison is being sued for refusing to pass along Spanish-language letters, and thereby violating a prisoner’s rights.
The American Civil Liberties Union is claiming that the free speech rights of William Diaz-Wassmer, 26, were violated when prison employees refused to pass along letters from the prisoner because they were written in Spanish.
The prison’s policy is that all mail must be screened to assure they contain no security threats. If the mail is written in code or in a language the officials do not understand, it is returned to sender.
In Diaz-Wassmer’s case, his mail was often written in Spanish, and the prison workers could not read Spanish the letters were returned.
