Appeals Court Vacates Injunction Blocking Iowa Book Banning Law
In a brief six-page ruling, a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held that school officials and politicians have broad discretion over what school libraries can remove from library shelves without violating the First Amendment.
In a blow to the freedom to read, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit this week ruled that a 2023 Iowa state law, S.F. 496, can go into effect, reversing a lower court decision and sending the case back to the lower court for a third hearing, barring a move to have the full Eighth Circuit rehear the case en banc.
Emma McClatchey
Signed by Iowa governor Kim Reynolds in May 2023, S.F. 496 bans all books and materials with depictions of sex, written or visual, from school libraries, and makes librarians and educators liable for any alleged noncompliance. The law also includes a so-called “Don’t Say Gay” provision, barring educators from addressing gender identity and sexual orientation for grades Kindergarten-6th Grade, and it requires school officials to notify parents if their children are found to be using a different name or pronouns or asking for any other gender-related accommodations.
In response to the law, Iowa school districts reportedly pulled hundreds of titles from their shelves, including many classic works, when the law was first passed—more than 3,400 according to one study by the Des Moines Register—including a disproportionate number of books that contain LGBTQ characters, historical figures, or themes.
A Long and Winding Legal Road
The appeals court decision is the latest twist in what has been a long and winding legal road since S.F. 496's enactment.
Shortly after its passage, the controversial law prompted two separate legal challenges: in November 2023: Lambda Legal and the ACLU of Iowa filed the first suit to challenge the law, calling it “a clear violation of public school students’ First Amendment right to speak, read, and learn freely.” Days later, Penguin Random House, the Iowa State Education Association, and a group of bestselling authors also sued.
After a hearing, federal judge Stephen Locher blocked the book banning provision of the law on December 29, 2023, issuing a 49-page opinion and order in which he found the ban on materials with sexual content to be unconstitutionally vague and "wildly overbroad."
In August 2024, however, a three-judge panel of the Eight Circuit vacated Locher’s injunction and sent the case back with instructions to more fully assess whether the plaintiffs’ facial challenge to the constitutionality of the law was proper under a test set out in a 2024 Supreme court decision in Moody v. Netchoice.
In March 2025, Locher delivered his second opinion, once again blocking the book banning provisions of the law.
In an emphatic 40-page decision, the judge found the facial challenge to the law’s constitutionality to be proper, and held that S.F. 496 had resulted in the "forced removal of books from school libraries" that are not obscene, and, in many cases, have "tremendous pedagogical value."
Government Speech by Another Name?
But in a brief, six-page ruling this week, a conservative three-judge appeals court panel (made up of two Trump appointees and a George W. Bush appointee) once again vacated Locher's decision.
Citing the Fifth Circuit’s stunning May 2025 decision in Little v. Llano County, the court ruled that school library book decisions do not implicate a student's right to receive information, concluding that the First Amendment “does not guarantee students the right to access books of their choosing at taxpayer expense.”
Furthermore, while the appeals court agreed that school library decisions are neither “student speech” nor “government speech,” the panel concluded that school library books fall into a third category: "school-sponsored speech."
Leaning heavily on a standard for "school-sponsored speech" set forth in a 1988 Supreme Court decision, Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (which involved a school principal’s decision to pull articles written by students for the school newspaper), the panel held that school officials and lawmakers can exercise editorial control over "activities that may fairly be characterized as part of the school curriculum," and that a school library is such an activity.
"If school libraries are not government speech, no standard more exacting than Hazelwood applies," the panel held, concluding that, in the context of school-sponsored speech, "actions 'reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns' do not run afoul of the First Amendment," and that both "the Supreme Court and this Court have held that schools have a legitimate pedagogical interest in prohibiting speech involving sexual content."
Notably, that finding directly overruled Locher, who, in his March 2025 decision, rejected the state's argument for applying the Hazelwood standard.
In his reasoning, Locher argued that the Hazelwood case involved “true student speech” in the form of student-written articles in the school newspaper, and that the Hazelwood standard focuses on students who are "speakers." However, in terms of the publishers' lawsuit over the book banning provisions of S.F. 496, the "speakers" are not students, Locher pointed out, but "the authors and publishers" whose books are now being broadly denied their intended audience.
"The State Defendants have not identified, nor has the Court been able to locate a single case upholding school library restrictions as broad as those found in Senate File 496," Locher wrote in his opinion, adding that the statewide bans mandated by S.F. 496 are fundamentally different from the traditionally narrow court decisions on book removals which usually involve a single challenged title and are made at the local level.
"Books like Nineteen Minutes are not merely being removed from one bookshelf in one school district, but rather from school libraries in dozens of school districts across the state," Locher pointed out. "It is appropriate in this context not merely to apply First Amendment cases involving students’ rights," he concluded, "but also First Amendment cases involving authors’ rights."
In his opinion, Locher also suggested that the state was attempting to use Hazelwood as an end run around the first appeals court panel’s explicit rejection of the state’s government speech argument.
“Hazelwood’s permissive ‘legitimate pedagogical concern’ test governs only when a student’s school-sponsored speech could reasonably be viewed as speech of the school itself,” Locher explained, pointing out that in the Eighth Circuit’s first decision, the three-judge panel concluded that the placement of a book in a school library could “not reasonably be viewed as the school speaking.”
While he acknowledged that "school sponsored speech" resides between student speech and government speech, Locher suggested that the initial Eighth Circuit decision treated "government speech" and "school-sponsored speech" as more-or-less synonymous, and he suggested that applying the Hazelwood standard in this case would "undermine" the first Eighth Circuit panel's findings by effectively viewing school library books as "government speech after all."
Furthermore, the panel also disagreed with Locher that S.F. 496 is overboard and unconstitutionally vague.
"Plaintiffs contend the law is so amorphous that it is difficult to apply and requires librarians and teachers to make judgment calls," the decision states. "We find these contentions unavailing. The plain language of the statute prohibits books containing ‘descriptions’ or ‘visual depictions’ of six categories of specified sex acts. The specified sex acts are detailed under Iowa law. The library restrictions are neither amorphous nor unreasonable."
That finding is contradicted by the experience of librarians, however, as many have said they remain unsure of what exactly runs afoul of the law, leading many to pull books out of an abundance of caution rather than face termination or other consequences.
Perhaps more to the point, the appeals court offered no explanation in its brief opinion of how or why barring 17 year-olds from accessing award-winning books like Toni Morrison's Beloved in their school libraries qualifies as a "legitimate pedagogical interest" for the state.
Another Setback
In a statement, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said the ruling was “a huge win” for Iowa parents. “Parents should always know that school is a safe place for their children to learn, and not be concerned they are being indoctrinated with inappropriate sexual materials and philosophies.”
Of course, "inappropriate" sexual content was already barred from school libraries prior to the passage of S.F. 496, as Locher himself pointed out in his first decision, writing that the state had presented "no evidence that student access to books depicting sex acts was creating any significant problems in the school setting."
The plaintiffs, meanwhile, have vowed to press on. "This ruling is a setback, but it is not the end of this fight," said Nathan Maxwell, Senior Attorney at Lambda Legal, in a statement. "Iowa's S.F. 496 is a cruel and unconstitutional law that silences LGBTQ+ children, erases their existence from classrooms, and forces educators to expose vulnerable students to potential harm at home. We will continue to use every legal tool available to protect these young people.”
Dan Novack, Penguin Random House VP and Associate General Counsel also said the legal battle would go on. “While we’re disappointed that the injunction is no longer in place, we are actively evaluating next steps," he said. "The fight continues, and we stand with authors, educators, librarians, and students to protect access to books and the freedom to read.”
Freedom to read advocates have always acknowledged that the legal path to victory can be long and winding would require patience, and that's proving to be the case.
After a winning streak in court at the end of 2024 and into early 2025, the Eighth Circuit decision this week is yet another recent setback for freedom to read advocates—with several more important cases involving public and school libraries still in the pipeline.
This week's ruling comes after the Supreme Court in December 2025 declined to review the controversial Fifth Circuit decision in Little v. Llano County, which held there was no right to receive information in public libraries, a significant setback that has paved the way for local officials to remove books from public libraries for virtually any reason in the three states under the Fifth Circuit's jurisdiction: Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
Looking ahead on the freedom to read docket, there are two appeals in progress in the Eleventh Circuit: Parnell v. School Board of Escambia County (in which a district court, leaning heavily on the Fifth Circuit's Llano decision, agreed there is no First Amendment right to receive information in a school library); and an appeal of judge Carlos E. Mendoza's August 2025 decision to wipe out the book banning provisions in Florida state law B.B. 1069.
The Eighth Circuit is also reviewing a 2024 decision to strike down Arkansas’s Harmful to Minors law, Act 372.
The Ninth Circuit, meanwhile, recently revived a challenge of Idaho's recently enacted law HB 710, which requires schools and libraries to remove books vaguely deemed to be “harmful” to minors.
Two more closely watched book banning cases are also proceeding to trial at the district court level.
In Colorado, Crookshanks, et al. v. Elizabeth School District is heading to trial after the defendants abruptly abandoned an appeal before the Tenth Circuit in January, just days before oral arguments, leaving in place an injunction that ordered 19 books be returned to a high school library’s shelves.
And in Utah, a coalition of plaintiffs is suing Utah state officials alleging that H.B. 29, the state’s “Sensitive Materials Law,” is overbroad and in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
This story has been updated.
