book ban – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Another Book Ban Bill Makes Its Way To The Texas Governor’s Desk

from the people's-republic-of-Texas dept

Never give up. That’s the unofficial motto of the Republican party pretty much everywhere in the nation. No matter how many rights you violate, court decisions you lose, and public criticism you receive, always remember, you’re in the for the long haul. It is your (allegedly) God-given right to take away other people’s rights and to impose your personal morals and bigotry on everyone who has the misfortune of being a constituent.

Book ban laws are a dime a dozen these days. Texas legislators are particularly enthusiastic about limiting access to content they don’t like, so they’re not going to let loss after loss derail their plans to impose their will on the entire state.

Speaking of losses, Texas House members just took an L with a bill that would have prevented minors from accessing books deemed “sexually explicit” by the state’s censors without approval of a legal guardian. In this context, “sexually explicit” tends to mean nothing more than a book treats anyone not white and straight as an actual human being. This bill also added $10,000 fines to the mix, threatening to impoverish already underpaid librarians for providing their services as librarians.

That one is dead. Great. But others are still alive, including this one, which the bill’s author admits would end up banning classics like Romeo and Juliet, the hugely popular Lonesome Dove series, and frequent target of book ban/burns, Catcher in the Rye.

Here’s how this book ban bill plans to get around the First Amendment and other impediments to its proposed censorship of content that’s often on required reading lists for school students.

Senate Bill 13 would give school boards, not school librarians, the final say over what materials are allowed in their schools’ libraries by creating a framework for them to remove books based on complaints they receive. The final version of the bill agreed upon by lawmakers from both chambers would allow school boards to oversee book approvals and removals, or delegate the responsibility to local school advisory councils if parents in a district sign a petition allowing their creation. The House version of SB 13 required 20% of parents to sign the petition, but the version agreed upon between chambers requires only 50 parents or 10% of parents in the district, whichever is less.

Any last minute alterations to this Senate bill can probably be traced to a disappointing, disjointed decision handed down by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last month. The Appeals Court took two swings at the case, which dealt with censorship attempts in Llano County, Texas. The second attempt was no better than the first. In the end, the Fifth Circuit said libraries (and library boards) should have final say in content curation. If they didn’t, they could (rhetorically) be forced to provide readers with access to (using the court’s example) “racist content.”

Of course, no one pushing for book bans in Texas cares about removing racist content. In fact, two of the books they were pushing to have removed were books detailing the history of racism in America. But the final call by the court says curation is up to the libraries themselves, decisions which are not made by librarians, but rather by library boards.

Which is what this bill hopes to do — allow the government to censor content it doesn’t like while pretending it’s all about libraries’ rights to curate content to better serve the public. It’s bullshit, but it’s modeled after bullshit that’s been proven to work in the Fifth Circuit.

Here’s what happened in Llano County after local politicians first tried to force the local library to remove content they didn’t personally care for:

The original library board was disbanded and reformed. The library director (Amber Milum) was prohibited from attending these meetings and forced to ask permission from the new board to purchase any new books.

The Fifth Circuit has given its blessing to local governments stacking the deck to force libraries to engage in viewpoint discrimination. This bill lowers that bar even further, allowing parents to become part of the government by elevating themselves to the position of regulators with only 50 signatures or 10% of parents in the district, whichever is less. So, if a school pushes back against censorship, those making that decision can easily be replaced by parents and others fully aligned with the ruling party’s inherent bigotry.

And there’s more to it than just stacking the deck against personal freedom. The intent of the bill’s crafters is to place many barriers between constituents and content these legislators don’t like. This bill allows the hecklers to achieve a veto with a minimum of heckling and then enjoy the result of their veto for as long as possible, even if they don’t ultimately succeed in getting books permanently removed from library shelves.

School boards will have 90 days after complaints on each book are filed to reach a decision on whether to add, keep or remove material from school bookshelves. The proposed advisory councils are only required to meet twice per school year…

Libraries and schools have to comply within 90 days. If they wish to challenge the decision made by the “advisory councils,” they will just have to wait until the next time the council convenes, which could be as long as six months after the school boards’ responses to challenges are required. Keeping content off shelves for a year is as simple as mandating it in the first session and tabling any discussion of this decision during the next session. Rinse and repeat. It makes permanent bans just as easy to accomplish as temporary removals. All council members have to do is remember to kick the can down the road during the next meeting.

Will the governor sign this bill? Given that it’s unlikely to be successfully challenged in this appellate circuit, I can’t see how he won’t. This is a censor’s dream, aided and abetted by legislative enablers and a court that can’t seem to find the willpower to act as a check against government overreach if it’s overreach performed by their preferred side of the partisan divide.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, book ban, cnesorship, free speech, libraries, school boards, texas

Federal Judge Tells Colorado School District To Return ‘Challenged’ Books To Its Libraries

from the stop-being-so-shitty dept

I’m not going to rehash the entire recent history of book bans/book challenges in this nation. Suffice to say that ever since Trump first took office in 2017, there’s been a significant increase in the number of suddenly “concerned” citizens seeking to remove books from libraries and a corresponding, equally-significant increase in legislation seeking to enact actual book bans. All this from the “party of free speech.”

In the Elizabeth School District of Colorado, the censorship effort took this form: a committee was formed last summer to determine which books in school libraries dealt with “sensitive topics.” The committee identified 19 books that met this extremely vague criteria. Unsurprisingly, these were some of the books the board flagged as problematic:

The removed books primarily featured Black, brown and LGBTQ people, the ACLU said, including “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas, “Beloved” and “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini and “#Pride: Championing LGBTQ Rights” by Rebecca Felix.

According to the district board of regents, the targeted books depicted things it felt kids shouldn’t be exposed to — things like “racism, discrimination, mental illness and sexual content.” The books the board pulled (and flagged for review with post-it notes on pages dealing with these subjects) are the same ones being targeted all around this country. None of the members of the board were likely familiar with the subject matter. Most likely, a few of them received emails from “concerned” parents with the subject line “FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD:FWD Dangerous Books Your Kids MIght,, be Reading!!!”

The ACLU sued the school district. And, at least at this point, it has won. The federal judge handling the case has ordered the district to un-remove these books and stop being so stupid while the court busies itself with making this injunction permanent. (Somehow the Denver Post was unable to locate the court order displayed prominently on the ACLU of Colorado website, so we’ll link to the ACLU here and give it the credit its due, both for the win and for posting a copy of the court order.)

The decision [PDF] runs 45 pages and takes care to point out everywhere the school board went wrong, ranging from its baseless, self-serving claims that damning email conversations were “hearsay” to misrepresenting the standards for obtaining preliminary injunctions. Oh, and there’s also the thing where the school board tries to pretend determining what books can be in libraries is “government speech” that can’t be held to First Amendment standards.

That last argument simply doesn’t work. A library carrying a copy of Mein Kampf wouldn’t be assumed to be representative of the views of the government funding the library. And yet, that’s what the government (in the form of the school district) attempts to claim here in hopes of securing its censorship.

Then there are the emails. No wonder the board of regents wanted these treated as inadmissible hearsay. This one, sent from board of regents director Heather Booth to Superintendent Snowberger, says the quiet part loud. (Emphasis in the original.)

It’s crucial that as we navigate these discussions, we remain mindful of the promises we made and the values we pledged to support. By doing so, we can maintain our integrity and ensure that our actions align with the expectations of those who elected us. As I like to say “we need to keep politics out of the classroom and away from the kids”. However conservative values are exactly what we are and plan to continue to bring into the district.

That one gives the whole game away. Booth doubled down with another email, one that cc’ed the entire board of regents:

[I]n an email between Director Booth and a graduate of the District, Director Booth justified the book removal, stating that, “[a]s an elected official committed to conservative values for our children, I feel a strong obligation to honor the promises made during my campaign.”

And then tripled down:

Director Booth responded, “[p]ersonally, LGBTQ is only regarding sexual preference which doesn’t belong in any school. . . . Our constituents will not be happy about us returning any of these books. That is who we are beholden to.”

If anyone owns this federal court loss, it’s Director Heather Booth. Every example cited by the court contains one of her emails.

These five examples strongly suggest that the District’s motivations behind removing the 19 books is blatantly unconstitutional under Pico and other precedents.

And here’s why the district must put the so-called “challenged” books back on the shelves:

It is unconstitutional—under both the federal and Colorado Constitutions—to remove books from a school library merely because the District “disagree[s] with the views expressed in the books.”

Viewpoint discrimination has always been a non-starter in federal courts. That the district thought otherwise is problematic. So is its attempt to defend its actions, using tax dollars forcibly contributed to it by “constituents” Director Booth seems to feel are so loyal they’ll never realize they’re being steadily fucked by their incompetent representatives.

The Constitution lives to fight another day and, at least for now, students will have access to books that were, for lack of a more concise word, “banned” by people for no other reason than they didn’t like what they contained.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, book ban, book challenge, censorship, colorado, elizabeth school district

Iowa Book Ban Law Again Mostly Dead Following Return Trip To Federal Court

from the now-stay-down dept

Will the third time be the charm? Let’s hope so. This charmless act of hatred masquerading as “for the children” legislating has been struck down again by the same federal court that tried to kill it off the first time.

In late December 2023, an Iowa federal court told the state there was little chance of saving its anti-LGBTQ/book ban, given how completely unconstitutional it was. It forbade school libraries from carrying books “containing descriptions or depictions of sex acts.” It also prevented teachers or librarians from mentioning anything related to sexual orientation or gender identity to any student from kindergarten through sixth grade.

The law wasn’t very specific as to what constituted a “sex act,” but to be on the safe side, it created a specific carve-out for the Bible, which contains descriptions of several sex acts. More heinously, the law also wished HIV/AIDS into the ignorance cornfield.

The health curriculum shall include the characteristics of communicable diseases including acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

[…]

The health curriculum shall include age-appropriate and research-based information regarding the characteristics of sexually transmitted diseases, including HPV and the availability of a vaccine to prevent HPV, and acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

The court handling the challenge to the law said this about it on its way to saying the law, as written, was a good as dead, constitutionally-speaking:

The law is incredibly broad and has resulted in the removal of hundreds of books from school libraries, including, among others, nonfiction history books, classic works of fiction, Pulitzer Prize winning contemporary novels, books that regularly appear on Advanced Placement exams, and even books designed to help students avoid being victimized by sexual assault. The sweeping restrictions in Senate File 496 are unlikely to satisfy the First Amendment under any standard of scrutiny and thus may not be enforced while the case is pending. Indeed, the Court has been unable to locate a single case upholding the constitutionality of a school library restriction even remotely similar to Senate File 496.

Whew. You’d think no one would appeal this sort of shutdown, but the Iowa government isn’t spending its own money and wouldn’t even consider briefly borrowing its constitutents’ shame. It appealed this decision and was granted a brief revival by the Eighth Circuit Appeals Court eight months later.

It didn’t exactly green light the law, but suggested the lower court needed to spend a bit more time considering the underlying First Amendment issues. It also suggested that even if it agreed with the lower court’s reasoning, it would only apply the injunction to the named plaintiffs and allow the rest of state to be subjected to their legislators’ open bigotry.

The case has been examined again by the lower court. And, whatever hopes the state may have had about salvaging this terrible law have been dashed again. The lower court is no more impressed than it was the first time around.

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.

The new decision from U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher again temporarily blocked the part of the law that prohibits school libraries and classrooms from carrying books that depict sex acts.

[…]

The appellate court told the lower court that it failed to apply the correct analysis in determining whether to temporarily block the law. In his decision Tuesday, Locher stated that the unconstitutional applications of the book restrictions “far exceed” the constitutional applications “under both legal standards the Court believes are applicable.”

In its latest decision [PDF] (which the Associated Press can’t seem to link to or embed in its coverage), the court arrives at the same conclusion it did last time. This isn’t a good lawful. It’s definitely not a lawful law. And it takes time to criticize the state’s hypocritical carve out for its preferred religious text.

In essence, Senate File 496 does what Pico and Pratt prohibit: it imposes a puritanical “pall of orthodoxy” over school libraries by concluding that there is no redeeming value to any book that contains a “description” of a “sex act” even if the book is a work of history, self-help guide, award-winning novel, or other piece of serious literature. See Pico, 457 U.S. at 871 (“Our Constitution does not permit the official suppression of ideas.”) (plurality opinion); see also Tinker, 393 U.S. at 511 (“In our system, students may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the State chooses to communicate.”). The fact that the Bible and other religious texts are exempted from Senate File 496 reinforces the problem because it shows that even the Iowa Legislature does not believe all books involving sex acts are devoid of pedagogical value. There is no substantial or reasonable governmental interest that would justify allowing some books with sexual content to be in school libraries but not others.

The injunction is back in force. This will obviously be appealed because the Eighth Circuit reversed it the first time it handled the case. (Of course, it would be appealed anyway because there’s no way the state’s top bigots are going to let this one go until there are no further legal options.) We’ll see what the Appeals Court has to say at some point in the future but, at least for the moment, the Constitution wins and hateful ignorance is back to racking up losses.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, bigots, book ban, censorship, iowa, kim reynolds, lgbtq, libraries, stephen locher
Companies: penguin random house

Georgia Legislators The Latest To Criminalize Being A Librarian

from the anything-that-makes-censorship-easier dept

The hate and stupidity continues. Emboldened by Trump’s first presidential term and his subsequent, extremely destructive return to the Oval Office, legislators with an unacknowledged preference for fascism are pushing further and further, comfortable in the uncomfortable fact that the only thing capable of stopping them is their own shame.

And since they don’t have any of that, all bets are off. State legislators in Georgia are doing what others have done elsewhere: strip protections from the people staffing public libraries in the apparent hope of jailing or fining a few of them for allowing minors to access content these legislators don’t like. Here’s Miguel Legoas, reporting for the Savannah Morning News (and reprinted by USA Today):

On Tuesday, the Senate Education and Youth Committee approved Senate Bill 74 and moves on to the Senate Rules Committee, the last step before it can make it to the Senate’s vote.

[…]

Georgia Code § 16-12-103 makes it illegal to sell or distribute ‘harmful materials’ to minors. There is an exception for public libraries as well as any library that’s part of a school, college, or university. SB 74 removes this exception.

The original law is pretty basic. It makes it illegal for people or businesses to sell or otherwise provide access to sexually explicit content. It’s the sort of thing that makes porn publications only accessible to adults and prevents public displays of sexually explicit content anywhere minors might have access to.

What this bill does is strip protections from librarians staffing public libraries, something that clearly has never been a problem before, and clearly isn’t even a problem now. It’s all very performative and is likely the leading edge of similar bills that will seek to redefine LGBTQ+ content as inherently “sexually explicit.”

The bill might be performative but the consequences are real. Any violation of this law will be treated as a “high and aggravated misdemeanor,” which are violations that generate fines of up to $5,000 per violation, as well as the possibility of being sentenced to up to a year in jail. Even if librarians don’t end up getting tossed in jail, they’re likely to be fined and saddled with a criminal record for simply doing their jobs.

If there’s any upside here, it’s that the legislation provides an affirmative defense for accused public servants, providing they can demonstrate they made a good faith effort to ensure minors were provided access to sexually explicit materials.

It’s a law that does nothing but provide a way for opportunistic prosecutors to punish librarians for being on the clock while allowing minors to check out books to read. Very little of what is carried by most public libraries would fit the description of the content described in the underlying law. But with a little bit of imagination — or an expansion of the definition of “explicit” material to cover non-pornography — the state government will have more censorship options, including the chilling effect that might encourage librarians to lock up, remove, etc. content that they think legislators will object to in the future.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, book ban, censorship, free speech, georgia, libraries

South Dakota Republicans: Let’s Start Jailing Librarians

from the book-burning-alternative-that-treats-librarians-like-witches dept

This stupid state. These stupid legislators. This goddamn constituency.

This is my current home state. And it is painful to be here.

Kristi Noem is now the head of the DHS, presumably because she never asked what this country could do for her, but instead asked “what can I do for Donald Trump?” She kept asking this question even though no one was really expecting an answer during the Biden administration. Then she allowed her constituents to be ravaged by floods because she’s already spent too much money sending South Dakota National Guard troops to Texas to “defend the border.”

The state legislature contains a vast Republican majority, as it has for years. But rather than limiting themselves to turning South Dakota into the world’s foremost inland offshore banking site, they’re now just following their (Dear) leaders. Performative cruelty is the name of the game. And the latest move is to criminalize the act of being a librarian, as Joshua Haiar reports for the last truly independent source of local journalism, South Dakota Searchlight.

In a move that one lawmaker said would lead to “locking up librarians,” South Dakota legislators advanced a bill 38-32 on Thursday at the Capitol in Pierre that would remove legal protections for libraries and other institutions if children view books that meet the legal definition of “harmful to minors.”

The bill would repeal an exemption shielding libraries, schools, universities, museums and their employees from prosecution under laws regulating obscenity and dissemination of material harmful to children. Without the exemption, people who work for those entities could be subjected to prosecutions resulting in a year of jail time and a $2,000 fine.

Librarians have normally been given a pass here because no librarian actively stocks what most people would consider to be pornographic material. But now there are plenty of politicians and special interest groups pretending content that has been carried by libraries for years is now “obscene” simply because they don’t like the content. These efforts almost exclusively target LGBTQ+ content, with legislators pretending any depiction of alternative sexuality is de facto porn.

Rep. Bethany Soye is one of those people. She’s a Republican representing the state’s largest city, Sioux Falls. She was also instrumental in the passing of an age-verification bill that would subject any website to legal action and fines if even a single pornographic image is hosted by it.

Other Republicans are more logical than Rep. Soye. While Soye claims this just prevents librarians from lending porn to kids (something that never happens), Republic lawmaker Drew Petersen says the wording of bill allows prosecutors to target librarians for doing nothing more than being helpful librarians. And another Republican lawmaker stated this law does nothing at all to make South Dakota great again.

“If a librarian accidentally allowed a student to take an anatomy book home or an encyclopedia with a picture of a naked human being, they could potentially be charged with a year in jail,” Peterson said. “That’s why I am voting no.”

Rep. Will Mortenson, R-Fort Pierre, also opposed the measure.

“We’re locking up librarians,” Mortenson said. “Folks, we’re not growing the state. We’re not helping our people. We’re locking up librarians in this bill.”

Soye, of course, had her own take on the issue, one that’s just as incoherent as you’d expect from someone who thinks it’s a good idea to criminalize an entire internet just because some kid might stumble across some porn somewhere.

In her closing arguments, Soye rejected claims that the bill criminalizes librarians.

“Just because there’s a penalty for something, does that mean you’re criminalizing someone?” she asked.

HOLY FUCK, SOYE! THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THAT MEANS! When you create a criminal penalty for an act that previously had no criminal penalty, you are — BY FUCKING DEFINITION — criminalizing that act. Calling this response idiotic is an insult to idiots everywhere. This is, by far, one of the worst defenses of anything ever — so terrible I’m on the verge of going full Godwin on it. This is incredibly dumb shit being said by someone who’s so far up their own bigotry they can’t even recognize their own blatant contradictions.

It’s not a law yet. Unfortunately, it’s headed to the state senate, which is just as heavily stocked with Republicans and just as willing to violate constitutional rights so long as it makes the frothiest of their fellow lawmakers and constituents momentarily happy.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, bethany soye, book ban, censorship, free speech, libraries, republicans, south dakota

Trump’s Dept. Of Education Rolls Back Anti-Book Ban Guidance, Says Bring On The Censorship!

from the party-of-free-speech-strikes-again dept

Because we’re all just riding Mr. Trump’s wild ride down the greased slope towards fascism, the nation just has to keep getting worse day by day until the rot has set in permanently.

Trump’s first term in office unleashed a lot of latent censorial desire in like-minded Republicans, who soon started assaulting constituents’ sensibilities and rights in quick succession. Book bans were suddenly acceptable again. Openly hating women, minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ+ individuals was now just part of day-to-day business.

Some of this went on the back burner, mostly due to courts recognizing the inherent unconstitutionality of these laws and acts. Some of it got shelved temporarily after the government was in the hands of a regular type of president, rather than a dead-eyed despot with delusions of grandeur.

Unfortunately, someone who was considered an aberrational embarrassment on the presidential timeline, has made a return to the nation’s top office. And he’s brought all of his bad ideas and terrible people with him, along with four years of burning resentment.

This, as reported by ABC News, is just another one of things that are going to be commonplace for at least the next four years, if not longer so long as enough members of the American public prefer the warm touch of a boot heel on their neck, rather than be forced to treat other human beings like… human beings.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has announced that it is rescinding all past guidance issued against the removal of books and will no longer employ a coordinator to investigate instances of unlawful book removals.

The department also announced that it has dismissed 11 book ban complaints and six pending complaints. According to the DOE, the complaints alleged that the removal of these books “created a hostile environment for students.”

We like to think federal departments and agencies serve the people. But, ultimately, they don’t. They serve whoever’s currently in charge. Most incoming presidents won’t drastically re-design federal entities in their own image, at least not immediately. Others will do it just because they can’t stomach the notion of anything but abject fealty.

This is what Trump, his cabinet, and his supporters want: a heckler’s veto they can deploy at will to silence people they don’t believe should be treated as equals. It has nothing to do with “protecting” children from content. It definitely doesn’t have anything to do with this, either.

The Trump administration’s Department of Education states that the books were targeted because school districts and parents “have established commonsense processes by which to evaluate and remove age-inappropriate materials.”

The statement continued, “Because this is a question of parental and community judgment, not civil rights, OCR has no role in these matters.”

Trump wouldn’t be handing this over to parents if he didn’t believe only the parents who think like he thinks will do everything they can to restrict the content everyone has access to, not just their own kids. And the only word with any meaning in the phrase “parental and community judgment” is “judgment.” Whatever this small, but very active, minority decides to judge as unworthy of public access will be banished from public libraries under the guise of saving kids from “age-inappropriate” content.

This is an insult to true American values, as well as an insult to the communities that are going to suffer from the Dept. of Education’s decision to let neighborhood fascists decide what content is publicly-accessible. Not only will they suffer from the loss of access, but they’ll have to open their wallets to fund defense of unconstitutional laws and book removals — acts performed against their best interests by the people they’ve elected and appointed to serve their interests.

It’s ugliness all the way and all the way down. Those of you celebrating Trump’s return to office and the steady escalation of hatred across the nation are no better than the fascists you continually pretend you’re insulted to be compared to. Just don’t ask for any sympathy when the bloodlust you’ve stoked finally results in your faces being torn off by the leopards you’ve invited into your hearts and homes.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, book ban, censorship, department of education, donald trump, free speech

Federal Judge Strikes Down Unconstitutional Arkansas Book Ban Law

from the killing-freedom-'for-the-children' dept

Like far too many legislators, Arkansas politicians have decided it’s time to codify irrational hatred. To do this, they pretended they had a sudden and urgent new obligation to protect “the children” harder than they’ve ever been protected before against the encroachment of alternative viewpoints.

Like far too many other states, the Arkansas government piggy-backed on existing obscenity laws to declare content they personally didn’t like as “obscene.” Then they went further, saddling librarians at public libraries with civil and criminal penalties for not doing enough censorship.

And, like many similar hateful efforts, this codification of hatred hit a dead end in a federal court. Public library plaintiffs managed to secure a temporary injunction blocking Arkansas’ book ban from being enforced last summer. The catch was this: the law would remain blocked only until the government presented its revised case for expanded censorship. If it could demonstrate it had a legitimate government interest in banning books these legislators felt were harmful to kids, the law could go back into force.

However, it if couldn’t demonstrate this, the association of librarians and libraries would be free to continue running their libraries without government interference — something they had done for years before Donald Trump took office in 2016 and ushered in an extremely ugly era of so-called “conservatism.” Since then, book challenges and book bans have become a day-to-day occurrence in the Land of the Free. And all at the hands of the party that swears it’s here to beat back censorship.

This is not the only lawsuit the government of Arkansas is facing. Another one, filed by parents arguing the First Amendment right of access is harmed by the government forcibly moving some content to “adult only” areas of libraries (and, of course, this content is almost always targets LGBTQ+ authors and/or content critical of America’s long history of racism) is still ongoing.

But this one has reached its expected end, as the Associated Press reports:

A federal judge on Monday struck down key parts of an Arkansas law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for providing “harmful” materials to minors.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks found that elements of the law are unconstitutional.

As is unfortunately usual, the Associated Press seems able to access court rulings, but is unwilling to share the rulings with their readers.

Here’s the full opinion [PDF], courtesy of me: a guy who not only donates to RECAP, but also knows how to search it.

The entire law — one ushered into existence with a signature presumably scrawled in crayon by Governor (and former Donald Trump PR flack) Sarah Huckabee Sanders — has not been blocked. Small parts of it survive. But the mandates criticized in the court’s original grant of an injunction are no longer on the table.

Here’s what the court had to say about the law in its first ruling:

The vocation of a librarian requires a commitment to freedom of speech and the celebration of diverse viewpoints unlike that found in any other profession. The librarian curates the collection of reading materials for an entire community, and in doing so, he or she reinforces the bedrock principles on which this country was founded. According to the United States Supreme Court, “Public libraries pursue the worthy missions of facilitating learning and cultural enrichment.”

[…]

The librarian’s only enemy is the censor who judges contrary opinions to be dangerous, immoral, or wrong.

The public library of the 21st century is funded and overseen by state and local governments, with the assistance of taxpayer dollars. Nonetheless, the public library is not to be mistaken for simply an arm of the state. By virtue of its mission to provide the citizenry with access to a wide array of information, viewpoints, and content, the public library is decidedly not the state’s creature; it is the people’s.

And here’s what it’s saying now, as it declares going after libraries and librarians unconstitutional.

[B]y prescribing mandatory procedures for evaluating challenges, Section 5 actually prevents libraries from relying on policies that many have successfully used to be responsive to patron feedback, including negative feedback, without allowing an overwhelming number of challenges or letting the views of a vocal few dictate what is generally available to the public.

And this imposition — especially when tied to civil and criminal penalties — cannot possibly be considered constitutional, not with this amount of damage being done to the First Amendment. The government can’t argue that censorship like this is something beyond the reach of free speech jurisprudence by pretending it falls outside of these protections. (Emphasis in the original.)

The State’s defense of Section 5 boils down to an argument that censorship of otherwise constitutionally protected speech is acceptable because every selection decision that affects a public library’s collection—from the original purchase of materials by librarians, to the books’ sequestration on special shelves or behind locked doors, to their outright removal from the collection—is “government speech” not subject to constitutional scrutiny.

But Section 5 has nothing to do with the library’s curation decisions, so if indeed such decisions constitute government speech, the State’s arguments in that regard are unavailing. First of all, no one is arguing that librarians are violating their patrons’ First Amendment rights through curation decisions. Secondly, burdening access to books within a public library collection or removing books from that collection due to content or viewpoint—which Section 5 permits, if not encourages here—implicates the First Amendment and does not qualify as protected government speech.

Summing it all up, the court says two clauses of the book ban law are null and void under the US Constitution.

Here, it is clear that there is no set of circumstances under which Sections 1 and 5 would be valid. The State has made no attempt to tailor Section 1 based on the Arkansas Supreme Court’s interpretation of “harmful to minors,” though the State has been on notice of the broad sweep of this definition since 2004. Similarly, Section 5 contains multiple undefined terms that invite censorship decisions on the basis of content.

The permanent injunction is in place. The state can continue to enforce what’s left of the law, but what’s left of it isn’t going to allow these bigoted legislators to achieve their aims of wiping libraries of content they don’t like. I imagine they’ll try to rewrite the law. But if they couldn’t do it right the first time, it’s unlikely they’ll find a legally credible basis for mass censorship the second time around. Unfortunately, the nation is loaded with bigots, including a sizable voting bloc that keeps electing bigots for the sole purpose of imposing their viewpoints on every other Arkansas resident unfortunate enough to share the state with them.

What’s been struck down here will be resurrected. But, at this point, there’s still no way the government can make it stick. But with Donald Trump returning to office with a boatload of shameless lackeys in tow, who knows what the Constitution will look like a half-decade from now.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, arkansas, book ban, booksellers, censorship, for the children, free speech, libraries, obscenity, sarah huckabee sanders

New Jersey Governor Signs Law Making Book Bans More Difficult, Shields Librarians From Civil Suits

from the thwarting-bigots,-protecting-librarians dept

In this new era of censorship — aided and abetted by people who think they can “make America great again” by destroying the rights that actually make America great — almost every state is dealing with mass censorship efforts. Most of these involve libraries because motivated bigots have found leverage points to maximize their efforts without ever having to leave the comfort of their homes.

Bathed in the glow of their laptops, keyboard warriors are submitting book challenges at an alarming rate, forcing states that never thought this would be an issue to play defense against part-time censors using copy-pasted boilerplate to ensure their fellow Americans only have access to the kind of content they approve of.

Book bans have been erected in several states. And many of these laws have already been struck down as unconstitutional. But for people who need to do nothing more than wield a keyboard, it hardly matters. The assault on free speech continues, mainly because it’s also an indirect assault on people of color, LGBTQ+ Americans, and anyone else considered to be too “woke” or “not white enough” to be allowed to detail their own personal experiences.

Fortunately, some states are pushing back before these efforts become a literal constitutional crisis. The state of New Jersey is the latest to preempt these unconstitutional attacks on free speech. A bill signed into law by Governor Phil Murphy not only makes book challenges more difficult, but it ensures library staff can’t be personally sued for their content moderation decisions.

Under the law, public and school libraries are barred from excluding books because of the origin, background, or views of the material or of its authors. Censoring books will also be prohibited solely because a person finds them offensive. The bill permits restriction in the case of “developmentally inappropriate material” for certain age groups. The measure also requires local school boards and the governing bodies of public libraries to set up policies for book curation and the removal of library materials, including a way to address concerns over certain items.

That’s only part of the good news. The other part is that the law [PDF] prevents Trump-addled Americans from personally bankrupting librarians because they made informed decisions about what content to keep in their libraries, as well as who should have access to it.

Any staff member of a public library, including a librarian employed by a public library, shall be immune from civil and criminal liability arising from good faith actions performed pursuant to the provisions of sections 9 through 11 of this act.

NJ residents are still free to throw as many BS book challenges at the wall as they can, but demands for removal are no longer entirely in the hands of library staff. Instead, their requests will be handled on an individual basis by a committee that includes librarians, government employees, a local resident (who cannot be the person named on the removal request), and other oversight officials as the government deems necessary. While the request is under review, targeted content will remain accessible to all library users.

It’s touted as a ban on book bans, but it can’t actually prevent a ban from taking place. What it does do, however, is make it extremely unlikely that any challenged book will be banned. Existing laws prohibit making obscene material available to minors and it’s extremely unlikely any state or local employee staffing libraries are interested in violating these laws. But the book banners tend to believe any content they don’t care for must violate obscenity standards and use this leverage to target local libraries and their employees for personal, litigious pain. This law ensures that can’t happen. And the creation of a review group will help prevent it from being beholden to particular ideological interests.

Of course, this isn’t going to make would-be book banners happy. They’ll argue every defeat is the result of some liberal cabal with ties to pizza molestation joints or whatever. But the rest of the state’s residents will remain well-protected under state law, as well as by the US Constitution, which the framers earnestly intended to protect US citizens from government-enabled censorship, which every book ban definitely is.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, book ban, censorship, new jersey, phil murphy

Texas Board Decides It Will Stop Treating Nonfiction Book As Fiction After Nationwide Blowback

from the think-before-you-act,-bigots dept

Well, a wrong has been righted. Kind of. And for how long, no one really knows.

Texas is on the leading edge of book censorship in the United States — you know, the land most famous for its freedoms, one of which is the famous/infamous (depending on who you ask) First Amendment. It’s only second to another state run by the “Party of Free Speech,” according to data gathered by people who actually firmly believe in protecting First Amendment rights.

Texas is second in the nation in banning books, with more than 1,500 titles removed from 2021 to 2023, according to PEN America, a literary freedom non-profit. Only Florida has banned more, with 5,100 titles removed.

The censorship will continue to escalate, of course, despite this recent concession. Both Florida and Texas are run by publicly-funded bigots who not only encourage the worst of their constituents to engage in speech-threatening activism, but provide them with the codified weapons they need to accomplish this task.

But one county in Texas was on the receiving end of national negative press when its censorship board (the Montgomery County “Citizens Review Committee”) decided it wasn’t going to limit itself to banning books from public schools and libraries. It was also going to decide what is or isn’t a fact based on its subjective feelings about the facts themselves.

The Montgomery County Commissioners Court ordered librarians there to reclassify the nonfiction children’s book “Colonization and the Wampanoag Story” as fiction.

This reclassification decision is a consequence of a contentious policy change in March. Right-wing activists pressured the Montgomery County Commissioners Court to remove librarians from the review process for challenged children’s, young adult and parenting books.

That’s the sort of thing we expect from dictatorships and dystopian novels. It’s not the sort of thing we expect to see in the United States: a literal, unilateral decision to declare some facts to be fiction, simply because a government board, whose meetings are closed to the public, decided it would rather not allow children to have access to factual depictions of past violence against indigenous people.

Fortunately, the nonfiction book has now been restored to its proper classification. (h/t Techdirt reader Eric Knapp)

A Texas county reversed its decision to place Colonization and the Wampanoag Story, a children’s history book about the Native American experience, in the fiction category at local libraries.

[…]

The Texas community of Montgomery county, near Houston, reclassified the book after creating a citizen review committee, making the committee’s meetings secret and removing librarians from deliberations – changes driven by a conservative Christian group.

This move towards greater and more creative censorship is one of the expected side effects of allowing activists with religious agendas to be given an out-sized voice in day-to-day government. In this county, the propelling force is Michele Nuckolls, the founder of “Two Moms and Some Books” — a group whose innocuous name might make some people believe this a grassroots efforts that just wants what’s best for all children. In reality, it’s a self-described “Christian conservative group” that wishes to see as many people harmed as possible, especially those who don’t describe themselves as “Christian conservatives.”

The group advocates for books, primarily those about sexuality and transgender identity, to be moved to more “restrictive” adult sections of the library and for more Christian titles to be added to shelves.

Nuckolls is also an annoyance at local school board meetings — a place where she shouldn’t really be allowed to speak considering she homeschools her children and is generally not affected at all by any of the school board’s decisions.

But Nuckolls is going to face a bit more of an uphill battle the next time she and her bigoted buddies start leaning on the “Citzens Review Committee” to ban more books and/or declare facts that don’t portray white Christian conservatives in the most flattering light to be fiction.

At an Oct. 22 meeting, the Montgomery County Commissioners Court issued a stay against all actions of the citizens reconsideration committee since Oct. 1 and put any future decisions on hold.

The commissioners also created another committee to review and revise library policy, including the rules around the citizens reconsideration group. It will be made up of employees from different commissioners’ offices and advised by the county attorney’s office.

For now, Montgomery County is incapable of further embarrassing itself on the national stage. But once the stay is lifted, it will be up to the committee overseeing the Citizens Review Committee to prevent further such embarrassments from reoccurring. Given the fact that this committee will be comprised other representatives of the same county government that allowed the first debacle to happen, I don’t have particularly high hopes the county won’t try anything quite as stupid again once it’s been given the opportunity to do so. But at least it’s something, no matter how minimal it is. That means at least a few people on the inside are aware these actions are not only unwise, but unconstitutional. What Montgomery County needs is more of those people making decisions, rather than handing it off to the most ignorant policymakers and constituents in its midst.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, book ban, censorship, libraries, montgomery county, texas

Texas Censorship Board Declares Nonfiction Book To Be Fiction So It Can Bury History It Doesn’t Like

from the not-even-pretending-there's-a-mask-to-take-off dept

People are censoring books all over the country, thanks mainly to a new wave of hatred encouraged and blessed by a failed businessman and marginal golfer who somehow managed to be elected president for a single term.

These book ban laws encourage activists with “conservative views” (you know which ones) to “challenge” any content they don’t like. Unsurprisingly, most book challenges target books that either contain LGBTQ+ content or highlight America’s history of racism. These challenges have nothing to do with “protecting children” from inappropriate content (since there are plenty of pre-existing obscenity laws capable of keeping this content out of the hands of kids) and everything to do with hateful people erasing people they don’t like, along with any criticism of the parts of history (slavery, segregation, etc.) they do like.

Governments get to censor what they want while pretending it’s just acting in the interest of concerned citizens. Governments provide the weapons and the laws placing book challenges in citizens’ hands gives them the (im)plausible deniability.

When all the parts start moving, the outcomes are literally Orwellian: a government entity declaring certain facts to be fiction in order to deny people access to factual historical accounts. Here’s how this all went down, as recounted by founders of Texas Freedom to Read Project, an activist group fighting a battle on multiple fronts to ensure Texans’ access to books a bunch of bigots would rather no one had access to.

While book challenges and book challenge avenues are a dime a dozen thanks to tons of elected bigots, this new twist belongs to one county in Texas, which has given certain people the power to unilaterally decide what is or isn’t factual.

[A] decision made this month in a county near Houston left us stunned. The Montgomery County Commissioners Court ordered librarians there to reclassify the nonfiction children’s book “Colonization and the Wampanoag Story” as fiction.

This reclassification decision is a consequence of a contentious policy change in March. Right-wing activists pressured the Montgomery County Commissioners Court to remove librarians from the review process for challenged children’s, young adult and parenting books.

[…]

Shortly thereafter, the newly formed Montgomery County “Citizens Review Committee” reclassified “Colonization and the Wampanoag Story” as fiction. The committee reviewed the book in a closed meeting — all its meetings are closed to the public — and it offered no explanation for its decision. The new policy does not allow decisions made by the Citizens Review Committee to be appealed.

That’s how you start erasing your own history. You take the librarians out of the equation. Next, you remove the public from the conversation by making these discussions private. Then you give only the citizens you want to hear from — including any non-residents who want to challenge content they don’t like — the only invitation to the discussion: the blanket permission to challenge books and/or their classifications. Then you seal it with a court order and pretend this is just citizens protecting each other, rather than the government engaging in censorship on behalf of people who love censorship as long as it only silences the people they don’t like.

So, maybe it is time to let Texas secede. It’s always wanted to. And the past decade of state leadership has proven it has no desire to be part of a constitutional republic… at least not as long as that requires it to respect the US Constitution. This state — like far too many in the US right now — is willingly embracing the very worst of its residents. And that means far too many people in positions of power cannot be trusted to govern, not when they’ve decided the most hateful in their midst should be given the largest platforms. They’re literally trying to rewrite history at this point. If they’re not stopped now, they won’t give up until they’ve managed to marginalize or disappear millions of people who they’re supposed to be representing.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, book ban, censorship, libraries, montgomery county, texas