Judge blocks anti-LGBTQ+ book ban while calling out Christian hypocrisy
The Bible has many sexually explicit passages… but schools are banning far-tamer books as “obscene.”
By Arin Waller
Thursday, March 27, 2025
A federal judge on Tuesday issued a preliminary injunction, blocking the enforcement of an Iowa state law that removes books with LGBTQ+ themes and references to sex acts from school libraries. The judge’s decision noted that the law had an exemption for the Bible, despite the text’s many sexual and brutal passages.
The book ban was part of a broader “Don’t Say Gay” law passed in Iowa, Senate File 496. Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) signed S.F. 496 into law in May 2023. It restricts instruction on LGBTQ+ issues in K-6 classrooms and mandates that libraries only contain “age-appropriate” material.
Two suits were filed to challenge this law. The first suit was filed the Iowa State Education Association as well as by publishers and authors who had their works removed due to the bans. The lawsuit’s notable plaintiffs included book publisher Penguin Random House and authors John Green and Jodi Picoult. They claimed the law was overly broad and age-indifferent.
“[It’s] far beyond obscenity to prohibit any book with any description of a sex act for any age,” the lawsuit stated.
A second lawsuit was filed by LGBTQ+ advocacy group Iowa Safe Schools along with parents and children represented by Lambda Legal, the ACLU, and the law firm of Jenner & Block. Their complaint challenged the law’s book ban, its restrictions on teaching about gender identity as well as its provision forcing the outing of students who wish to change their name or pronouns.
The judge presiding over these cases — U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher, a Joe Biden appointee — issued an injunction in both suits on December 2023. All of the law’s provisions were blocked except for the forced outing one. In August 2024, this injunction was lifted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.
The appeal was issued when the appellate court found the lower court failed to apply proper examination when issuing its injunction The case was sent back to Locher for re-examination of what the appellate court felt were the appropriate standards of review.
In his Tuesday ruling, Locher reissued a second preliminary Injunction. In a 40-page briefing, Locher ruled that, of the 3,400 books that were removed, many of them were not outwardly pornographic or obscene. Thus, the law, on its face, is unconstitutional.
Locher wrote that S.F. 496 “makes no attempt to evaluate a book’s literary, political, artistic, or scientific value before requiring the book’s removal from a school library and thus comes nowhere close to applying the ‘obscenity’ standard that is typically used to determine the constitutionality of statewide book restrictions. The result is the forced removal of books from school libraries that are not pornographic or obscene.”
Indeed, the law’s use of “age-appropriate” as a criterion was left rather vague, making it unclear what type of books are allowed and which books are deemed inappropriate.
The term’s vagueness became apparent upon viewing some of the titles deemed not “age-appropriate,” including George Orwell’s 1984 and Maus by Art Spiegelman. Meanwhile, titles such as the King James Holy Bible are exempt from this rule despite containing references to sex and brutality.
Judge Locher addressed this in his ruling.
“The fact that the Bible and other religious texts are exempted from Senate File 496 reinforces the problem because it shows that even the Iowa Legislature does not believe all books involving sex acts are devoid of pedagogical value,” Locher wrote. “There is no substantial or reasonable governmental interest that would justify allowing some books with sexual content to be in school libraries but not others.”
Locher is expected to rule in the Iowa Safe Schools suit soon. Both are likely to face appeal.