Judge Blocks Key Provisions of Iowa Book Banning Law

by

From Publishers Weekly:

In yet another legal victory for freedom to read advocates, a federal judge has blocked two key portions of SF 496, a recently passed Iowa state law that sought to ban books with sexual content from Iowa schools and to bar classroom discussion of gender identity and sexuality for students below the seventh grade.

In a 49-page opinion and order, judge Stephen Locher criticized the law as “incredibly broad” and acknowledged that it has already resulted in the removal of “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.”

Specifically, Locher preliminarily enjoined two provisions challenged in two separate but parallel lawsuits. Regarding the law’s ban on books with any depictions of sex acts, Locher found that the law’s “sweeping restrictions” are “unlikely to satisfy the First Amendment under any standard of scrutiny.” In a rebuke, Locher said he was “unable to locate a single case upholding the constitutionality of a school library restriction even remotely similar to Senate File 496.”

Locher said that the law’s “underlying message” is that there is “no redeeming value to any such book even if it is a work of history, self-help guide, award-winning novel, or other piece of serious literature,” adding that with the law state lawmakers had sought to impose “a puritanical ‘pall of orthodoxy’ over school libraries.”

Furthermore, Locher suggested that the law was a solution in search of a problem. “The State Defendants have presented no evidence that student access to books depicting sex acts was creating any significant problems in the school setting, much less to the degree that would give rise to a ‘substantial and reasonable governmental interest’ justifying across-the-board removal,” he wrote. “Instead, at most, the State Defendants presented evidence that some parents found the content of a small handful of books to be objectionable.”

As to the law’s restrictions on instruction relating to gender identity and sexual orientation, Locher sought to clarify two “severe” misunderstandings about what the law actually says. First, nothing in the law act restricts the ability of school officials to engage with issues of gender identity and sexual orientation with students in grade seven and above, he held, whether in the classroom or outside of it. “To the extent school districts, teachers, or students have been interpreting the law otherwise, they are simply wrong,” Locher wrote.

As for students in grade six and below, Locher noted that the plain text of the law actually doesn’t distinguish between “cisgender or transgender identity or gay or straight relationships.” While opponents of SF 496 have often described the effort as a “don’t say gay” or “don’t say trans” bill, based on the plain language of the statute, Locher said, it is actually a “don’t say anything” bill.

“The statute is therefore content-neutral but so wildly overbroad that every school district and elementary school teacher in the State has likely been violating it since the day the school year started,” Locher held. “This renders the statute void for vagueness under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because the State will have unfettered discretion to decide when to enforce it and against whom, thus making it all but impossible for a reasonable person to know what will and will not lead to punishment.”

Still, Locher was quick to acknowledge the intent of the law, acknowledging that both the plaintiffs and the state agree that the law was “designed to prohibit discussion of homosexuality and transgenderism.” The problem, Locher said, “is that the Court cannot interpret Senate File 496 as targeting transgender identities and homosexual relationships without substituting the Court’s own choice of words for the ones chosen by the Legislature. This the Court cannot do.”

Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly

Click to Tweet/Email/Share This Post

8 thoughts on “Judge Blocks Key Provisions of Iowa Book Banning Law”

  1. I happened to read the latter post about passive aggressiveness, and it struck me that this kerfluffle in the making is based on just that:
    The parents and their supporters are drawing a line, and basing it on introduction of nearly ANY sexual content. Now, I seriously doubt that ALL the people on that side procreated through non-sexual means, or NEVER discuss them with their children. In the past, a rare few would protest the teaching of menstruation to girls (generally in the fifth grade, as most, at that time, wouldn’t need that info – few girls entered puberty that young). A few more might want to exempt their child from ‘sex ed’ – a class in which single-sex groups were given the biological fact of life.
    But, resistance was rare. The teachers treated the topic clinically, without undue prurience, and not feeling the need to detail the all the possible variations on sex acts
    Not today. Too often, reproductive topics in school are introduced as though students needed to know EVERY possible sexually related act, in Kinseyian obsessive detail.
    Furthermore, the parents disinclination to go into graphic detail is seen as Puritan, repressed, and against the interest of minor children.
    This whole thing erupted when SOME teachers – not all – took it upon themselves to overrule parental objections of inappropriateness (much of it due to age and developmental concerns), and delight in bringing sexual content, some of it extremely graphic, into class lessons.
    When I say “delight”, I mean that some of the offending teachers, preened on social media, smirking about the way they deliberately acted against parental wishes and rights.
    When I say graphic, I mean that, by comparison, the Our Bodies, Ourselves book – including pictures, seems positively G-rated.
    It’s as though they are competing for the title of Most Out-There Teacher, the Kewl One, who dwells in shoving salacious materials into their students hands.
    The bills are a last-ditch effort to hem in the teachers who cross the bounds, as they have accepted no limitations on their ‘judgement’. Or on the age (including, in some cases, K-3) of their students.

    • Makes you wonder why those folks got into teaching. To teach or to validate themselves?
      What’s more important to them, kids or ideology?

    • The bills are a last-ditch effort to hem in the teachers who cross the bounds, as they have accepted no limitations on their ‘judgement’. Or on the age (including, in some cases, K-3) of their students.

      A take-no-prisoners parent might next lobby for the sex offender registry if they find teachers are insistent on grooming their kids. If the kinder, gentler option doesn’t work, the less gentle option is next. One way or another, if the “educators” insist on warring against the parents, the parents will find a way to give them something to cry about. Likely you’re right that it’s only “a few.” That said, it would be in the best interest of the good teachers to start speaking out and policing their own.

      • “…it would be in the best interest of the good teachers to start speaking out and policing their own.”

        Never will happen.
        Unionized environments don’t allow that. All for one and all that. They circle the wagons and blame the outsiders.
        Rationality doesn’t factor in.

        To take out the bad ones you have to smack them all.
        That is what it will take.

        That is what the laws being passed aim to do.
        If the judge prevails the appeals will follow. And if those fail, congress will be called upon.

        Parents who actually care about their kids’ schooling are a rarity but they will not be denied. If breaking the public school system is required that’s how far they’ll go. For starters there’s 32 states with school choice programs that can be extended, perhaps, to teacher choice. Or alternate secular schools or schooling coops will emerge, leaving public schools for kids whose parents don’t care.

        Nurture will find a way. 😉

Comments are closed.