A lawsuit was brought Thursday against Iowa’s new law that says public school libraries and classrooms can’t have almost any book that shows sexual activity. The lawsuit is backed by the country’s biggest publisher and several best-selling authors, such as John Green and Jodi Picoult.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court by Penguin Random House, four authors, several teachers, a student, and the Iowa State Education Association, which is the state’s teachers union and represents 50,000 current and past public school teachers.
In the spring, the law was passed by the Republican-led Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds. It became law this fall. Along with the book ban, the law says that teachers can’t talk about sexual orientation or gender identity with students before sixth grade. Also, if a student asks to change their name or pronoun, the school has to tell their parents.
Dan Novack, an attorney for and vice president of Penguin Random House, said that the new case is against the part that bans books. Books that describe or show sex in any way are not allowed in schools or classroom libraries from kindergarten through grade 12. This is true no matter what the book is about or whether it is fiction or fact.
Novack said, “Iowa law makes it strange that a 16-year-old student is old enough to consent to sex but not old enough to read about it in school.”
The law also says that kids in kindergarten through sixth grade can’t read books that talk about sexual orientation or gender identity. The lawsuit says this goes against the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Novack said that the case wants the court to say that the law is unconstitutional. He also said that the government can’t violate free speech rights “by pretending that school grounds are constitutional no-fly zones.”
“We don’t agree with a law that also cuts down on content for other people’s kids,” he said.
When asked for a comment on the lawsuit, Reynold’s office pointed to a statement she made earlier this week in answer to a different lawsuit brought by the ACLU and Lambda Legal on behalf of several families that challenged the new law as a whole. This is what Reynolds said to defend the law: “protecting children from pornography and sexually explicit content.”
Plaintiffs in the most recent lawsuit didn’t agree with that description. They pointed out that “The Colour Purple” by Alice Walker, “Native Son” by Richard Wright, and “1984” by George Orwell are all books that have been banned in Iowa schools, which shows that “no great American novel can survive” under the law, Novack said.
Laurie Halse Anderson, a plaintiff in the case whose book “Speak” is about a teen girl who is raped and has been banned from several Iowa schools, was more direct.
“I think that anyone who thinks that a book about a 13-year-old rape survivor is sexy needs to get help,” Anderson said.
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