Cartagena Book bans soared in 2024. According to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, “more than 4,000 unique titles were challenged in public and school libraries in 2023, the most the group has recorded since it began tracking censorship efforts.” For whatever reason, conservatives have been on a tear to police public and school libraries and remove books that for whatever spurious excuse they find objectional, frequently books that look at race and gender. As one ALA representative noted, “The rhetoric about book banning right now is built around this falsehood that books touching on sex or gender identity, sexual orientation, or deal with what’s called critical race theory are legally harmful to minors.” Whatever happened to the recognition that “where’s there’s a will, there’s a way?’
One of the most extreme prongs of this initiative manifested itself in Arkansas in Act 372, signed by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders on March 31, 2023. This measure promised a year in jail as a criminal misdemeanour to any bookseller, librarian, or even parent for “furnishing a harmful item to a minor.” What an interesting weapon a teen might have in a run of the mill family argument, if they could file a complaint against their folks on such specious grounds? What’s a more laborious complaint process would be required and the “decider” would be local government and its officials “to stigmatize and impede access to disfavored or controversial viewpoints.”
In this situation, a large coalition of Arkansas bookstores, libraries, and parents, joined by a host of national groups like the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, Inc., the Authors Guild, Inc., the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund, and the Freedom to Read Foundation took the government to federal court. The judge blocked enforcement earlier in the year with a preliminary injunction, and now has issued a permanent injunction, ruling the law unconstitutional in forceful terms. Judge Timothy Brooks in his ruling found that,
“Sections 1 and 5 of the Act remain vaguely worded and susceptible to multiple meanings; Section 1 violates the due process rights of professional librarians and booksellers and the First Amendment rights of library and bookstore patrons; and Section 5 empowers local elected officials to censor library books they feel are not ‘appropriate’ for citizens to read and allows (if not encourages) content- and viewpoint-based restrictions on protected speech without any compelling governmental purpose.” He concluded that Sections 1 and 5 violated the First Amendment and ordered the defendants not to enforce those sections.
As Nate Coulter, executive director of the Central Arkansas Library System. stated “…officials would have been given the discretion to decide whether a book is ‘appropriate’ without the benefit of any criteria or procedures and without even having to first read the book. And librarians, fearing jail time, would have had an incentive to remove books that adults and older minors have the right to read; or maybe avoid the threat of prosecution by not acquiring those books.”
Would’ve and could’ve, but not in Arkansas, or likely in America, will speech and basic rights be curtailed by governments based on caprice, prejudice, and governmental coercion.
Feliz Navidad!