The Donnelly Public Library, along with students, librarians, parents, and several of the world’s largest publishing companies, are suing the State of Idaho.
A complaint filed today in U.S. District Court says a law adopted last year by the Idaho Legislature violates federally protected free speech rights by censoring books available in public libraries.
The law, known as House Bill 710, also imposes “vague and sweeping” standards that violate the state’s due process obligations under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, according to the complaint.
Since the law took effect July 1, all libraries have been required to establish a complaint process for books that are “harmful to minors” and take “reasonable steps” to restrict access to any books fitting that criteria. In response, some libraries have removed books from shelves or relocated them to sections that cannot be accessed by anyone under the age of 18.
“The right to speak and the right to read are inextricably intertwined,” the complaint said. “Authors have the right to communicate their ideas to students without undue interference from the government. Students have a corresponding right to receive those ideas. Publishers, educators, and parents connect authors to students in collaboration with one another. If the State of Idaho dislikes an author’s idea, it can offer a competing message. It cannot suppress the disfavored message by falsely affixing to it a label of ‘harmful’ or ‘obscene.’”
The complaint asks a federal judge to throw out the law, which last April was signed by Gov. Brad Little after being approved by both chambers of the legislature.
Defendants named in the complaint include Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador and prosecuting attorneys in Ada, Nez Perce, and Valley counties. A spokesman for Labrador declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Eagle Public Library trustees
The Eagle Public Library Board of Trustees is also listed as a defendant. In September, the trustees voted to remove three books from the library’s shelves and relocate 20 others after an anonymous complaint was filed for the books.
The lawsuit names whoever filed the complaint as defendants “Jane or John Doe.”
Former library trustees Sarah Hayes and Kelsey Taylor, who were removed from their positions without explanation in October, repeatedly pushed library staff for preemptive reviews of the library’s collection—against the advice of attorneys for the library.
“Adults only” library
In Donnelly, the law led to the adoption of an “adults only” policy amid space constraints that prevented the separation of books in the 1,000-square-foot library.
The library’s collection of more than 13,000 books is currently organized into sections for children, young adults and adults, but the library is unable to restrict minors from being able to physically access adult books.
Under the new law, if a written complaint is filed about a book, the library must review the book in question and move it to an adult section within 60 days if it contains adult material as defined by the law.
A successful challenge and failure to move the book within 60 days would result in the library receiving a $250 fine. A civil lawsuit could also be brought against the library or its staffers.
“For the Donnelly Library, those risks are simply too high to carry,” Library Director Sherry Scheline said in a filing to the district court. “Given the Donnelly Library’s exceedingly tight budget, the cost to defend even a single challenge could shutter the library.”
The library developed a waiver form that can be signed by parents who wish to exempt their children from the provisions of the law, but Scheline said enforcing the waiver policy is a “logistical nightmare” and does not guarantee immunity from legal action.
Without donors like you, this story would not exist.
Make a donation of any size here
The policy has also led to falling circulation at the library. Last summer, the library checked out 999 items from July 1 to Aug. 15, compared to 1,748 items during the same period a year earlier.
“I expect continued reductions in circulation numbers and overall library usage while HB 710 remains in effect, which I anticipate will, in turn, reduce the Donnelly Library’s already limited tax-supported budget,” Scheline said.
Major publishers on board
Joining the Donnelly Library as plaintiffs in the lawsuit are several major publishing companies, including Penguin Random House, Harper Collins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishing, Simon & Schuster, and Sourcebooks.
Harper Collins is the second-largest book publisher in the world, and is owned by News Corp., which publishes the Wall Street Journal and shares ownership with Fox News.
Access to books published by each of the companies is limited by the new state law, according to the complaint, which lists affected titles such as “It” by Stephen King, “Game of Thrones” by George R.R. Martin, and “Collected Poems 1947-1980” by Allen Ginsberg.
Other plaintiffs include authors Malinda Lo, David Levithan, Dashka Slater, and the Authors Guild, an advocacy organization representing more than 14,000 writers.
Students, parents, and a school librarian
In Meridian, Rocky Mountain High School Librarian Christie Nichols is named as a plaintiff. The complaint cites a list issued by the West Ada School District that bans over 60 books from Rocky Mountain and other schools in the district.
“Prior to this mandate, Rocky Mountain’s collection housed well over half of the titles included in the District list,” the complaint said. “Nichols has been instructed by the District to remove these…even though she believes these books have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for her students.”
An unnamed 17-year-old Lewiston High School student and Olivia Lanzara, an 18-year-old senior at Rocky Mountain High School, are also named as plaintiffs in the complaint.
Despite being a legal adult and exempt from the provisions of the new law, Lanzara must “jump through hoops” to access the removed books, according to the complaint.
“It is unclear to Olivia and others how any student, including those 18 years or older, are meant to go about this task,” the complaint said. “Whatever the procedure may be, actually following through with such procedure is likely to stigmatize those students seeking access to ‘banned’ or ‘protected’ books.”
Eagle resident Melissa Cull, who has three school-age children and is a patron of the Eagle Public Library, is also listed as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, which cites Cull’s desire for her children to have “free and open access to constitutionally protected materials.”
“Since the removal and reshelving of 23 titles in the Eagle Public Library, Cull fears that her children and others will face stigma for seeking out allegedly ‘inappropriate’ books, or that they will avoid otherwise valuable literature altogether,” the complaint said.
Little’s reluctance to sign law
House Bill 710 followed a previous proposal that would have subjected librarians to jail time for lending books with material deemed harmful to minors.
That proposal, first known known as House Bill 314, was vetoed in 2023 by Gov. Brad Little, who feared the “bill’s ambiguity will have unintended consequences.”
The law would have entitled parents to $2,500 in damages for successful challenges of books containing materials deemed offensive or obscene, which Little said would create a “library bounty system.”
A year later, Little signed House Bill 710 into law. The law is similar to the vetoed proposal, but reduces fines from $2,500 to $250 and enables libraries to avoid liability by removing “materials of concern” within 60 days of receiving a complaint. Still, Little noted that the new bill did not resolve all of his concerns with the previous proposal.
“Like many Idahoans, I will be watching the implementation and outcomes of this legislation very closely,” he wrote in a letter to Idaho House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star.
Complaint: unclear what is “harmful to minors”
The lawsuit asserts that the law does not clearly define what qualifies as “harmful to minors,” thus leaving libraries vulnerable to arbitrary enforcement.
The law defines the term as sexual content “judged by the average person” or “contemporary community standards” to be excessive or inappropriate for minors.
Sexual conduct and excitement, masturbation, sadomasochistic abuse, and nudity are among the examples of potentially harmful content listed in the law.
The vagueness of the law “fails to put (librarians) on notice as to what conduct exposes them to book challenge reviews, litigation, and liability under HB 710,” according to the complaint. “As a result of this vagueness, constitutionally protected materials are and will be suppressed and chilled.”
Homosexuality targeted
The complaint notes that the law singles out “any act of homosexuality” in its definition for obscene materials, but does not include any reference to heterosexuality.
This “viewpoint discrimination,” as labeled by the lawsuit, “suggests HB 710 is intended to specifically restrict access to, and stigmatize, books that portray relationships or romantic encounters between LGBTQ+ characters.”
Viewpoint discrimination violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, according to the complaint.
“The U.S. Constitution constrains the ability of state actors from discriminating on the basis of gender identity of sexual orientation,” the complaint said.
Case law related to each of the lawsuit’s claims are cited throughout the complaint, which was filed by Deborah A. Ferguson of Ferguson Durham, a downtown Boise law firm.
The plaintiffs are also represented by attorneys Michael J. Grygiel and Daniela del Rosario Wertheimer of the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic.
-BoiseDev’s Erin Banks Rusby and Sydney Kidd contributed reporting
