Federal Judge Blocks Arkansas Law to Criminalize Librarians for Providing “Harmful” Books to Minors

Nate Coulter, executive director of the Central Arkansas Library System, looks at a book in the main branch of the public library in downtown Little Rock.Katie Adkins/AP

On Saturday, a federal judge in Arkansas temporarily blocked a new law that would have allowed local prosecutors to file felony charges against school and public librarians who loaned out material considered considered “harmful to minors.” The law—which also created a new process to challenge the “appropriateness” of books and force them to be moved to shelves inaccessible by minors—is punishable by up to six years in prison or fines of $10,000. 

The preliminary injunction, issued two days before the law was set to take effect, comes in response to a lawsuit filed by a coalition including bookstores, library patrons, and public libraries in Little Rock, Fayetteville, and Eureka Springs. The libraries and bookstores argued they would be forced to remove all books from their young adult and general collections that mention sex or sexual conduct, or else ban all minors from entering their spaces. 

In his ruling, US District Judge Timothy L. Brooks wrote that the law likely violated plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights. “There is no clarity on what affirmative steps a bookseller or librarian must take to avoid a violation,” Brooks wrote.  The new law set out a “a poorly defined method to challenge the ‘appropriateness’ of a book, be it a children’s book or an adult book,” the judge added added. “If the law is intended to protect minors, it is not narrowly tailored to that purpose.” 

Nate Coulter, executive director of Central Arkansas Library System, praised the decision to Politico, saying the judge had correctly recognized the the law as censorship. “As folks in southwest Arkansas say, this order is stout as horseradish!” he wrote. 

At least four other Republican-led states—Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Tennessee—have passed similar obscenity laws targeting schools and libraries in the last two years, according to the Washington Post. And about 14 more states have considered such laws in recent years. The wave of legislation comes amid a record number of attempts to censor library books and resources in 2022, by the American Library Association’s count. And it’s part of a larger conservative effort to keep kids from learning about LGBTQ history and the history of race in the United States.

“Seeing books and librarians as a threat to our kids is hard to square with the reality of what goes on in our libraries,” Coulter had written wrote in a news release after the library board of directors voted authorized a lawsuit. “The plain effect of it as written will be to frighten librarians and deter libraries from offering books for the entire community of readers.”