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A federal judge has temporarily blocked Iowa from enforcing a law that bans library books that depict sex acts and bars public school teachers from discussing gender identity or sexual orientation.
U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher granted a preliminary injunction on Friday, writing that portions of the law are overly broad and “unlikely to satisfy the First Amendment under any standard of scrutiny.”
Signed earlier this year by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, the legislation forbids teachers from discussing sexual orientation or gender with students through 6th grade, and bans school libraries from offering books that depict sex acts, unless those books are religious texts like the Christian Bible. It also requires school staff to inform parents if students ask to use different names or pronouns.
Opponents of Senate File 496 filed two lawsuits last month, arguing on separate grounds that the law is unconstitutional.
Many hundreds of books have already been removed from school libraries in Iowa in anticipation of the law’s Jan. 1 effective date, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing plaintiffs in one of the lawsuits. Reynolds had touted the law as “protecting children from pornography and sexually explicit content.”
Locher, however, wrote that the law essentially deems all books (except religious texts) that depict sex as having no educational or literary value.
“The 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,” he wrote. “In effect, the Legislature has imposed a puritanical ‘pall of orthodoxy’ over school libraries.”
Locher added that the defendants have not presented evidence that books depicting sex acts have caused such “significant problems” in schools to justify the government’s order for their wholesale removal.
Moreover, because the language banning education about gender identity and sexual orientation is neutral and makes no distinction between cis and trans identities or gay and straight relationships, the law would effectively forbid instruction that recognizes any gender or any relationship between two people, gay or straight, Locher wrote.
“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,” the judge wrote. Teachers would be barred from identifying historical figures or literary characters by their gender or from referring to anyone by male or female pronouns, he added, “as any such discussion would, again, amount to promotion or instruction that relates to the person’s gender identity.”
Locher allowed the portion of the law to stand that requires school administrators to inform parents of a child’s request to change their name or pronouns.