ABFE Adds Support to Challenges to Iowa Book Banning Law

American Booksellers for Free Expression (ABFE), the free expression initiative of the American Booksellers Association, has filed an amicus brief in support of two lawsuits that challenge parts of Iowa’s “Don’t Say Gay” and book banning law, which was enjoined by the District Court of the Southern District of Iowa last December.

The ABFE brief highlights three major concerns with the legislation:

The law has a far-reaching impact that goes beyond schools and libraries because book bans can prevent authors from creating works, publishers buying works, and booksellers from selling works that could be banned from schools and libraries. 

The law restricts constitutionally protected speech. A library is not exempt from  the First Amendment since it serves the people in the community and cannot be limited only to what officials find acceptable or orthodox. Works restricted by the law include those with literary, scientific, and artistic value, and thus are not obscene. Finally, the law does not require “pervasive vulgarity,” a standard established in other precedents, for the removal of a book depicting a sex act.

The law is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad because of inadequate definition of what constitutes a “description or visual depiction of a sex act.” As the court has already noted, reasonable school districts could come to conflicting conclusions about what meets this standard.

“This is a vague, discriminatory, unconstitutional law that contradicts Iowa's state motto: ‘Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain’,” said ABA CEO Allison Hill in a statement.

Among the parties joining ABFE in filing the brief were the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

The filing supports lawsuits that were previously filed the ACLU of Iowa, Lambda Legal, and Jenner & Block as well as a second suit led by Penguin Random House. Iowa officials have appealed the decision that blocks enforcement of the law.

ABFE’s coalition’s amicus brief in the Iowa case can be found in full here.