Iowa Law Requiring Schools to Remove Books With Sexual Content to Take Effect

Books Update|Iowa Law Requiring Schools to Remove Books With Sexual Content to Take Effect

A law in Iowa that bars public schools from having books that depict sexual acts can take effect, following a ruling by federal appeals court judges on Friday.

The ruling overturned a preliminary injunction issued in December by a federal judge. The case will now go back to District Court.

The law, known as Senate File 496, was signed by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds in May 2023, and bans any titles that describe sexual acts from K-12 schools, with the exception of religious texts. The law also limits instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity before seventh grade, which has led some schools to remove books that address those issues.

After the law was passed, thousands of books were banned from schools around the state, according to The Des Moines Register. Titles that have been removed include classics and popular fiction like “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker, “Looking for Alaska,” by John Green, and “The Handmaid’s Tale,” by Margaret Atwood.

Several groups have challenged the law on free speech grounds, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, Lambda Legal, the publisher Penguin Random House and the authors Laurie Halse Anderson, Malinda Lo, Jodi Picoult and Green.

In December, Judge Stephen Locher, who was appointed by President Biden to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, temporarily blocked the law from taking effect. The law was too vague, he argued, and could result in the mass removal of books, casting a “puritanical ‘pall of orthodoxy’ over school libraries.” The state of Iowa appealed the injunction.

In the Friday ruling, the three-judge panel with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit argued that the injunction had been based on a “flawed analysis of the law.” Removing books from schools does not necessarily constitute a free speech violation when the government’s purpose is to impose “viewpoint-neutral, content-based, age-appropriate restriction on the content of public school libraries,” the opinion said.

In a statement, Governor Reynolds praised the judges’ opinion.

“It should be parents who decide when and if sexually explicit books are appropriate for their children,” she said.

Groups that have sued to stop the implementation of the law said they would continue in their efforts to prevent it from taking effect.

“Iowa families, and especially L.G.B.T.Q.+ students who will again face bullying, intimidation and censorship as they return for a new school year, are deeply frustrated and disappointed by this delay,” Lambda Legal and the A.C.L.U. of Iowa said in a joint statement. “Denying L.G.B.T.Q.+ youth the chance to see themselves represented in classrooms and books sends a harmful message of shame and stigma that should not exist in schools.”

The legal fight in Iowa is happening as book bans are surging across the United States. In the past few weeks, new laws and regulations restricting access to books that could be considered obscene or harmful have been put in place in Utah, Idaho, South Carolina and Tennessee.