A federal judge has halted Iowa’s overly-broad law that calls for the removal of LGBTQ-themed books deemed “obscene” from school libraries saying the legislation violates the First Amendment rights of students as well as authors..
Federal judge kills Iowa’s LGBTQ+ school library book ban www.courthousenews.com/federal-judg…
[image or embed] — Courthouse News (@courthousenews.bsky.social) March 25, 2025 at 5:29 PM
From Courthouse News:
U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher, a Joe Biden appointee, took back the case after an Eighth Circuit panel reversed a preliminary injunction he issued in December 2023.
The earlier injunction blocked the removal of so-called sexually explicit books from school libraries, including those with LGBTQ+ themes.
Locher wrote that Iowa’s law — Senate File 496 enacted in 2023 — “makes no attempt to evaluate a book’s literary, political, artistic, or scientific value before requiring the book’s removal from a school library and thus comes nowhere close to applying the ‘obscenity’ standard that is typically used to determine the constitutionality of statewide book restrictions. The result is the forced removal of books from school libraries that are not pornographic or obscene.”
In his ruling, Judge Locher noted that books containing “sexually explicit” material wouldn’t be appropriate for all students, especially those in elementary grades. But he added that Iowa school officials have already limited the access of younger readers to unsuitable books. The judge also noted that many of the books involved in the ban “have undeniable political, artistic, literary, and/or scientific value.” Included among those are such acclaimed books as “As I Lay Dying,” “Ulysses,” “1984,” “Native Son,” “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” “Beloved,” and “The Fault in Our Stars.”
Iowa cannot, for now, continue to enforce part of its book ban law, a federal judge said Tuesday, giving major publishers that sued the state the second temporary reprieve they requested. www.cbsnews.com/news/iowa-la…
[image or embed] — PEN America (@penamerica.bsky.social) March 26, 2025 at 10:35 AM
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