A Missouri Circuit Court overturned a state law that criminalized public and private school teachers and librarians for providing students books with what the state considered “sexually explicit material.” The judge called the law “unconstitutionally vague vague… and overbroad.” The law, which was enacted in 2022, resulted in hundreds of books being removed from school libraries. School staff members who were in violation could be fined $2000 or jailed for up to a year. “This is a real victory for all library professionals who are trained to select age-appropriate, developmentally appropriate material for students in both public and private schools,” […]
Book Bans
Judge Again Rules Against TX READER Law
Judge Alan D. Albright of the US District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin Division again ruled that Texas’s “READER Act,” which would require booksellers to rate every book they sell to public school libraries based on vague notions of “sexually explicit material,” is unconstitutional. He issued a permanent injunction against the law. Albright, who made the same ruling in 2023 before the case was appealed, agreed with plaintiffs Blue Willow Bookshop, BookPeople, the ABA, AAP, Authors Guild, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, that “READER can and does violate the First Amendment in several ways.” Albright […]
FL Judge Denies TANGO Authors’ Free Speech Claim
A judge in the Northern District of Florida ruled against two authors’ lawsuit against a school board, claiming that removing their book, AND TANGO MAKES THREE, from school libraries violates students’ and the authors’ First Amendment rights. Authors Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, plus an elementary school student known as B. G., argue that the book, which depicts a same-sex relationship between penguins who care for a chick, was removed based on its viewpoint. In his opinion, Judge Allen Cothrel Winsor often looks to the Texas book banning case Little v. Llano, which determined that “a library’s collection decisions are […]
Publishers, Authors, Win Florida Book Banning Suit
A federal judge has sided with six publishers, the Authors Guild, and several authors and students in their lawsuit against Florida over HB 1069, an “overbroad and unconstitutional” law which bans books that “describe sexual content” in school libraries. The law made unavailable books including Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and titles by author plaintiffs Julia Alvarez, John Green, Laurie Halse Anderson, Jodi Picoult, and Angie Thomas. “None of these books are obscene,” writes Judge Carlos Mendoza of the U.S. Middle District Court of Florida in his decision. “The restrictions placed on these books are thus […]
Full Court of Appeals Reverses Previous Rulings, Supports Texas Library’s Book Removals
A full en banc ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned both a lower-court decision and a Court of Appeals ruling that had found a Texas library’s removal of books was a violation of the First Amendment, in a 10-7 decision. Last year, a regular three-person Court of Appeals panel ruled that the Llano County Library could not remove books based on their content, writing that, “Government actors may not remove books from a public library with the intent to deprive patrons of access to ideas with which they disagree.” The titles at issue included books about […]
Half Price Books Fights Texas Bookstore Censorship Bill
Half Price Books spoke out recently in opposition to a new bill, Texas, HB 1375, which would allow people to sue bookstores for “damages arising from the distribution, transmission, or display of harmful material to a minor.” Half Price Books owner Kathy Doyle Thomas criticized the bill, saying it’s vague, and unrealistic to expect booksellers to read and assess every single book in their stores. She told NBC DFW, “How do we know in all of these books that we have in all of the stores across the state — we don’t know what’s inappropriate. [They] could be inappropriate in Corpus […]