DENVER, April 8 - A local bookstore does not have to turn over customer sales records to help police investigators determine who bought a book on how to make illegal drugs, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled today.

In a unanimous decision, the state's highest court found that both the First Amendment and the Colorado Constitution "protect an individual's fundamental right to purchase books anonymously, free from governmental interference."

The 6-to-0 ruling reversed a state appellate court's decision that ordered the bookstore, the Tattered Cover, to turn over receipts for the purchase of two books on the construction and operation of drug laboratories.

The books had been found by drug task force agents in a March 2000 raid of a methamphetamine laboratory in a trailer home in a suburb of Denver. Outside the trailer was an envelope from the bookstore, and the police wanted to determine which of the trailer's residents had bought the books and might thus be responsible for the drug laboratory.

Civil libertarians, the police and booksellers around the country had closely tracked the case.

"We think this is a very, very important decision because it is the strongest opinion on the issue of protecting customer privacy in bookstores that has come down so far," said Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

The foundation, a nonprofit group, filed a friend-of-the-court brief and helped raise money to pay for the bookstore's legal fees.

The Supreme Court ruled that a hearing had to be held before any search warrant could be executed on a bookstore when the store was not itself the subject of a police investigation. It also repeatedly referred to the "chilling effect" if warrants were issued without such hearings.

"We hold that the city has failed to demonstrate that its need for this evidence is sufficiently compelling to outweigh the harmful effects of the search warrant," Justice Michael L. Bender wrote for the court.

Joyce Meskis, 60, who has owned the Tattered Cover since 1974, said today that she was relieved that the case was over. "Two years is a long time to be working on this," she said.

Ms. Meskis added that she felt she had to pursue the appeal to the state's Supreme Court. "There is implied understanding when an individual goes into a library or to a bookstore with the respect to the privacy of their reading material," she said.

Lt. Lori Moriarty, commander of the North Metro drug task force â*” which involved officers from eight jurisdictions including Denver and its surrounding suburbs â*” said law enforcement agencies were also acting in the interests of citizens and the community.

"There is always the fear that government is chipping away at the foundations of our freedoms," Lieutenant Moriarty said, "and in this case I don't feel like we were. We both have passion for what we do, and our passion was protecting the citizens in our community from meth users and manufacturers."

The case has remained open until the search warrant decision was made. Lieutenant Moriarty said the task force would now take its case to the district attorney without the evidence it had sought.

"One thing the ruling did was brought forth a blueprint," she said. "The hurdle is bigger, but the blueprint is there."

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