Jorge Niebla, who is serving 13 life sentences for kidnapping and armed robbery, claims he never heard back after he wrote the company in August 2008 and asked for the price and ordering instructions for its April 2007 issue.
That issue features a nude pictorial of burlesque star Dita Von Teese.
"[I] would like to purchase the magazine ... but staff are being prejudice and don't have respect for my basic rights," Niebla wrote in the filing at U.S. District Court in New York.
U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska last week ordered Niebla to fill out a form to get a waiver of the $350 filing fee.
His two-page handwritten suit seeks an order compelling Boca Ratan, Fla.-based Penthouse Media Group to sell him the issue.
