The state’s largest teachers union is teaming up with a major publishing company to challenge an Iowa law that bans books that include sexual content from school libraries.
It’s the second lawsuit filed against the law this week.
The Iowa State Education Association joined with publisher Penguin Random House to ask a federal court to block enforcement of the law (SF 496), which also prohibits instruction relating to sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through sixth grade.
Other plaintiffs include four well-known authors who have seen their works removed from schools in response to the law: John Green, Malinda Lo, Jodi Picoult and Laurie Halse Anderson.
Anderson’s novel Speak, which tells the story of a 13-year-old girl who stops speaking after she is raped, has been removed from more than a dozen school districts according to a Des Moines Register database. She said the law violates students’ free speech rights to choose the books they want to read.
“The families of Iowa have the right to supervise and choose what their own children are reading, of course,” Anderson said. “But no one group of parents or politicians has the right to limit the books available to other citizens.”
She said removing Speak from schools ignores that fact that sexual violence is something many students will experience, and that discussing it can advance conversations about both consent and advocacy for assault survivors.
The lawsuit is directed at leaders of the Iowa Department of Education, Iowa State Board of Education and Board of Educational Examiners, as well as the superintendents of Urbandale and Norwalk schools.
Teachers from Urbandale and Norwalk, and a Perry school librarian are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit along with Urbandale High School senior Hailie Bonz, who said the law restricts her ability to read titles such as The Color Purple and The Handmaid’s Tale.
“As an avid reader, I believe books are crucial to explore ideas, develop curiosity, and grow intellectually,” Bonz said in a statement that accompanied the lawsuit announcement. “All students deserve the freedom to choose what literary works they’d like to read. SF 496 suppresses our freedom of expression by eliminating our agency to make this choice.”
This latest legal challenge follows a lawsuit filed this week by the ACLU of Iowa on behalf of Iowa Safe Schools and eight students and their families who argue the law violates the free speech and equal protection rights of LGBTQ students.
Gov. Kim Reynolds responded to that lawsuit with a statement saying, in part, that “books with graphic depictions of sex acts have absolutely no place in our schools.”
The arguments from the ISEA and Penguin Random House on freedom of speech and equal protection overlap with the legal challenge from the ACLU of Iowa. But Dan Novack, the publisher’s associate general counsel, said the new lawsuit is specifically aimed at what it describes as government interference in the operation of school libraries.
The lawsuit, he said, comes down to a question of where students are granted free speech rights.
“This case will turn upon a very simple question. Does the First Amendment apply in school libraries?” Novack said. “The answer has always been ‘yes,’ but if something has changed we’ll find out. But that can be clarifying and galvanizing in its own way.”
Under SF 496, schools must remove books that show or describe sex acts, as defined in Iowa criminal code, without considering the context within the story. Novack said that breaks from longstanding obscenity law.
“That is their right as a district to look at a book individually and figure out if, as a whole, it lacks serious artistic, political, scientific or literary value,” Novack said. “They’re not doing that. That’s not what the law allows. In fact it compels the opposite. Don’t look deeper than a single sentence if that’s what is causing concern.”
The lawsuit asks to block enforcement of the law, which is set to take effect in January.
