On behalf of the Kurt Vonnegut Estate, authors Elana K. Arnold, Ellen Hopkins, and Amy Reed, and two anonymous high school student plaintiffs with the ACLU of Utah filed a complaint on January 6 to challenge provisions of Utah House Bill 29, known as the “sensitive material review” law.

HB 29, which went into effect on July 1, 2024, prohibits “pornographic or indecent” material from public school classrooms and school libraries, and a “plausible claim” that material is “harmful to minors” which results in the removal of the offending item. The plaintiffs contend that the law violates First and 14th Amendment rights, noting in their filing that “no one disputes that pornography and obscene material can and should be excluded from school libraries.”

Defendants in the suit include Utah attorney general Derek Brown, the Utah State Board of Education and its members, and the school districts of Davis, Salt Lake City, and Washington, Ut., along with their superintendents. The case will be heard in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah.

In a statement, the ACLU said HB 29 has enabled the state “to remove a remarkable range of literature under unconstitutional, overbroad criteria imposed by the state legislature.” The ACLU further noted that “the law impermissibly restricts authors’ right to share information, ideas, and lived experiences through their constitutionally protected works.”

National attention has been focused on Utah’s statewide ban of 22 books so far, including Arnold’s What Girls Are Made Of and Damsel and Hopkins’s Tilt, Fallout, and Tricks. Utah put three more books on the statewide ban list just this week: Gregory Maguire’s Wicked, Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes, and Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Jason M. Groth, legal director for the ACLU of Utah, said the time was right to bring a case, because “Utah’s HB29 law is built to snowball. Just three school districts can trigger a statewide ban, ensuring more authors and more books are swept up. We are moving forward now with a strong case to protect the First Amendment rights of an impressive group of authors and students.”

Statewide restrictions are not the only book challenges under HB 29. In the filing, the ACLU explains that “to date, hundreds of books have been removed from individual libraries across Utah,” and these include plaintiff Reed’s novels Beautiful and The Nowhere Girls, which have been banned in other states as well.

“I originally got on board with this case back in the summer of 2024, when a fellow author and member of Authors Against Book Bans got in touch about getting involved in a potential legal challenge to HB 29, which was due to go into effect,” Reed told PW.

“Any time a story challenges power or gives voice to people who have been ignored, there will be efforts to silence it,” Reed continued, “As both an author and a mother, what alarms me is how much of this backlash is driven by fear and ideology, and by a desire to control what other people’s children are allowed to read.”

Vonnegut's message lives on

The Vonnegut estate attaches a household name to the Utah docket. Slaughterhouse-Five, which Kurt Vonnegut based on his experiences as a prisoner of war during the 1945 firebombing of Dresden, Germany, remains on the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom’s list of most-banned classics, decades after its 1969 publication. It was among the 11 books banned in the state of New York in 1975, which led to the Supreme Court’s plurality decision on the right to read in Board of Education, Island Trees School District v. Pico. SCOTUS’s December decision not to hear an appeal in a Texas book removal case, Little v. Llano County, means that Pico is still among the landmark First Amendment rulings that hold the line in matters of censorship.

Vonnegut, an outspoken advocate of the freedom to read, “regarded libraries and librarians as our most vital public institutions because ‘words are the most powerful tools we have,’” wrote Nanette Vonnegut, the late author’s daughter, in the ACLU’s statement. “Now, more than half a century later, Utah’s lawmakers’ determination to ban books like Slaughterhouse-Five denies innumerable young people in Utah the freedom to read, think, and grow; it is antithetical to what my father fought for during World War II and focused much of his literary legacy on addressing.”

Penguin Random House is among Vonnegut’s longtime publishers. Dan Novack, VP and associate general counsel for PRH, responded supportively to news of the case. “We applaud the ACLU of Utah, the Vonnegut family, and the brave authors and students challenging Utah’s unconstitutional censorship law,” Novack told PW. “Slaughterhouse-Five, like so many of the books being banned, is not just literature, but a vital tool for critical thinking, empathy, and understanding. Every state, every case, and every book matters in this fight. Together, we are making a real difference.”

ACLU staff attorney Tom Ford concurred. “This law censors constitutionally protected books, silences authors, and denies students access to ideas, in violation of the First Amendment rights of students and authors alike,” he wrote. HB 29 “must be struck down.”

This article has been updated with additional information.