Appeals Court Revives Challenge to Idaho Book Banning Law

In a win for Freedom to Read advocates, a three-judge panel of the U.S Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has found that parts of a recently enacted Idaho state law that has led to sweeping book bans across the state is likely unconstitutional.

In a 37-page opinion issued on January 29, the Ninth Circuit found that a district court erred in not blocking the book banning provisions of Idaho state law H.B. 710, Idaho’s Children’s School and Library Protection Act.

The law, enacted in July 2024, requires Idaho schools and libraries to remove books deemed "harmful to minors," and empowers citizens and the government to sue schools or libraries that don’t move materials deemed objectionable into "adult-only" sections within 60 days of receiving a complaint. Under the law, individual citizens who file complaints are entitled to $250 damage awards if a book deemed inappropriate is not removed.

In July 2024, a group of school officials, librarians, and advocates sued, alleging that the law’s “vague and overbroad” definition of “harmful to minors” runa afoul of the constitution.

In March 2025, federal Amanda Brailsford, a Biden appointee, denied the plaintiffs’ motion to block the book banning provisions of the law, and dismissed several plaintiffs for lack of standing, finding that the remaining plaintiffs had “yet to show irreparable harm that justifies a preliminary injunction.”

But in its ruling this week, the Ninth Circuit found that Brailsford erred in her analysis, holding that the H.B. 710’s “context clause,” the portion of the law that purports to define what materials are inappropriate, is in fact overbroad and unconstitutional.

“If a school, like one of Plaintiffs, abides by a claimant’s wishes and relocates a book, it risks its own First Amendment right to disseminate non-obscene content to minors of all ages. If it declines to do so, it risks legal action—even if the rejection follows the school’s own thorough, good faith evaluation of the work’s serious value under H.B. 710,” wrote judge Milan Smith for the appeals court. “At the very least, the ‘threat of invoking legal sanctions’ against institutions like Plaintiffs creates a ‘system of informal censorship,’ at most, the statute encourages formal censorship through the legal process. The First Amendment does not tolerate either outcome.”

Despite the ruling, the law remains in effect for now. While the appeals court reversed Brailsford, it remanded the case for her to consider a "narrowly tailored" injunction.

“The district court abused its discretion by denying Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction in its entirety. Plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on the merits because H.B. 710’s context clause is overbroad on its face, threatens to regulate a substantial amount of expressive activity, and is not readily susceptible to a limiting construction,” the appeals court concluded.

However, because Brailsford initially denied the plaintiffs’ motion, the lower court “had no occasion to consider the appropriate scope of a preliminary injunction in this case,” which, the appeals court held, which it should a chance to do. “We therefore remand to the district court for consideration in the first instance of the appropriate, narrow scope of a preliminary injunction.”

The district court will now hold “further proceedings” consistent with the appeals court’s opinion.

Notably, publisher Penguin Random House, the Authors Guild, several bestselling authors, and a small Idaho Library filed a second suit over H.B. 710 in February 2025. That case has been stayed pending the outcome of this appeal. And while next steps in that case are not yet clear, the Ninth Circuit ruling bodes well for the case.

In 2023, Idaho governor Brad Little vetoed the state's first attempt to ban books from Idaho libraries.

In a veto message, Little said he was concerned by the bill's "sweeping, blanket assumptions on materials that could be determined as ‘harmful to minors’ in a local library," and that the bill, which in its first version allowed for $2,500 damage awards vs. $250 in H.B. 710, created "a library bounty system that will only increase the costs local libraries incur."