Judge Strikes Down Portions of Arkansas Law That Threatened Librarians

Republicans passed the law in 2023, joining other conservative states and counties that have sought to restrict the availability of certain books.

A federal judge has struck down portions of an Arkansas law that could have sent librarians and booksellers to prison for providing material that might be considered harmful to minors.

The ruling by Judge Timothy Brooks of the U.S. District Court in the Western District of Arkansas is certain to be appealed. But his decision on Monday provided at least a temporary victory to librarians and booksellers who have said that the law would create a chilling effect since anyone could object to any book and pursue criminal charges against the person who provided it.

“This was an attempt to ‘thought police,’ and this victory over totalitarianism is a testament to the courage of librarians, booksellers and readers who refused to bow to intimidation,” said Holly Dickson, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, said in a statement that “schools and libraries shouldn’t put obscene material in front of our kids,” and she vowed to work with Tim Griffin, the state’s attorney general, to appeal the ruling.

Republicans passed the law, known as Act 372, in 2023, joining a wave of other conservative states and counties around the country that have increasingly sought to restrict the availability of certain kinds of books, particularly those with themes centered around race and L.G.B.T.Q. issues.

An earlier ruling in July 2023 blocked parts of the law from taking effect while it was being challenged in court.

The law required that any material that might be “harmful” to minors, including books, magazines and movies, be shelved in a separate “adults only” area. It also ended protections for librarians and educators that shielded them from prosecution if they used educational materials or provided books that some might find objectionable. The law also made it a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in prison, for librarians and booksellers to distribute a “harmful item” to a minor.

Judge Brooks, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, described parts of the law in his ruling as “unconstitutionally overbroad,” writing that the measures would deputize “librarians and booksellers as the agents of censorship.”

“When motivated by the fear of jail time, it is likely they will shelve only books fit for young children and segregate or discard the rest,” Judge Brooks wrote.

Judge Brooks also wrote that Section 5 of the law would censor books that are constitutionally protected for adults.

Sections of the law that were less consequential went into effect last year, such as one that allows parents to monitor their child’s library records.

State Senator Dan Sullivan, who sponsored the bill, defended the law in an opinion piece last year in The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

“We don’t exempt pharmacists from drug-dealing laws, slaughterhouses from animal-cruelty laws and doctors from sexual-assault laws,” Mr. Sullivan, a Republican, wrote. “Yet prior to my bill, teachers and librarians, who are the closest to our children, were 100 percent legally free to provide children obscene material at their jobs.”

Ben Seel, the senior counsel for Democracy Forward, which represented several Arkansas library associations, said in a statement that the state law “was written so broad and vague that librarians would have been forced to turn libraries into segregated vaults to avoid going to jail.”

Earlier this year, PEN America, a free speech group that gathers information from school board meetings, school districts, local media reports and other sources, said that more than 10,000 books were removed, at least temporarily, from public schools in the 2023-24 school year. That was almost three times as many removals as during the previous school year.

A fast-growing network of conservative groups, such as Moms for Liberty and Utah Parents United, has fueled the surge in book bans, describing its advocacy at school board meetings and in state legislative chambers as attempts to protect parental rights.

The materials they have targeted are often described in policies and legislation as sensitive, inappropriate or pornographic. But in practice, the books most frequently identified for removal have been by or about Black or L.G.B.T.Q. people, according to the American Library Association.

In May 2023, an Iowa law barred public K-12 schools from having books that depict sexual acts, with the exception of religious texts.

In South Carolina, new rules that went into effect in June state that school districts cannot have books or materials that include any depiction of sexual conduct, regardless of the grade level they are intended for. Critics have said the new rules could remove from shelves classics like “The Bluest Eye,” “1984” and “The Catcher in the Rye.”

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