A ruling in the Federal Court of Appeals on Friday, August 9, now allows Iowa’s SF 496 is allowed to go into effect. The bill requires all materials in public schools be age appropriate and that there be no “descriptions or depictions of sex acts,” defined by Iowa Code 702.17. The state has given virtually no guidance beyond what’s written, and it is a law championed and celebrated by several chapters of Hate Group Moms for Liberty throughout the state.
Upon its passage, a lawsuit were filed against the bill by several publishers, the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, Lambda Legal, and four authors. On Friday, a Federal Appeals Court overturned a preliminary injunction on the law, which was put into place in December. The three Eighth Circuit judges in Friday’s ruling stated that the injunction came thanks to a “flawed analysis of the law.” They continued, noting that book removals do not constitute a free speech violation.
We note that the district court concluded that the Library Provision is a
viewpoint-neutral, content-based, age-appropriate restriction on the content of
public school libraries, and we agree. The purpose of public school libraries is to
advance the school curriculum—that is, to facilitate the pedagogical mission of the school, which may involve some limitation of expression. See Henerey ex rel. Henerey v. City of St. Charles, Sch. Dist., 200 F.3d 1128, 1133-36 (8th Cir. 1999) (holding that a school district could restrict a student’s campaign speech for class president as it was a school-sponsored activity that was part of the curriculum and the district need not allow speech that was inconsistent with the its legitimate pedagogical concerns); and See Iowa Code § 256.11(9)(a)(2); Iowa Admin. Code 281-12.2(256). The pedagogical mission of the school allows for tailoring to provide for “the teaching of basic skills and ideas.” See Bd. of Educ., Island Trees Union Free Sch. Dist. No. 26 v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 915(1982) (Rehnquist, C.J., dissenting); Hazelwood Sch. Dist. v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260, 272-73 (1988) (“[T]he standard . . . for determining when a school may [limit] expression need not also be the standard for determining when a school may refuse to lend its name and resources to the dissemination of . . . expression.”). Given the pedagogical mission and the policy making authority possessed by Iowa, it is important in conducting a review and analysis to bear in mind that Iowa is not required to tolerate speech that undermines or is inconsistent with its central mission of educating Iowa children.
In other words, this overturning comes as a result of the court stating that public schools have the right to limit some speech if it is in opposition to their education of children. It is a dangerous precedent to set.
The law applies to all public schools, regardless of whether or not they have had any book challenges. It, like the law in Utah that has banned 13 books from every public school in the state, was created under the guise of giving “local control,” but actually puts the power of decision over books in public schools into the hands of the government. The lack of guidance from the state to schools in Iowa is a feature, not a bug.
It’s prime fuel for furthering the state’s push to funnel taxpayer money into private vouchers, which have already begun to close public schools in the state.
The three judges who issued the opinion are all republican appointees. Judge James B. Loken was appointed by George HW Bush in 1990, Judge Ralph Erickson was appointed by Donald Trump in 2017, and L. Steven Grasz was appointed in 2018 by Donald Trump.
When SF 496 was passed, districts across the state scrambled for how to implement the law. At least one district utilized Artificial Intelligence to compare their catalog of library books with Iowa’s definition of “sex act.” The Des Moines Register has been tracking books removed over the law and has already recorded 3,400 books banned statewide from public schools. Among them are Captain Underpants and Maus, common targets of contemporary book bans like The Kite Runner and 19 Minutes, as well as classics used in schools including 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple, and The Handmaid’s Tale. While many schools paused their removal of books while the law was paused, the Register reported that while some books were returned to shelves, nearly 2,000 remained inaccessible to students.
Iowa’s law provides little guidance except that the books have depictions or descriptions of sex acts. “Sex acts” are defined by Iowa code and by that definition, include books about sexual assault and rape; it would also include books about sex and sexuality written with teen readers in mind. The code specifies what counts as a “sex act,” but as reported by the Register in their research, it has also included scores of books by and about LGBTQ+ people, most of which do not meet the codified definition.
Those books have been removed because of another provision in SF 496, which only allows limited instruction on gender and sexual orientation before seventh grade. Schools removed books covering those topics, despite the fact those books do not need to be removed.
The court’s decision to overturn the injunction now puts Iowa among the states with laws that promote broad-scale book banning, including Utah, South Carolina, Texas, Idaho, and more. Expect to see an increase in mass book banning across the state of Iowa as the 2024-2025 school year launches.