As Republicans continue their assault on public school libraries and public libraries across the country, an Arkansas judge has provided a bit of a reprieve. A law due to take effect in Arkansas on August 1, 2023, allows librarians and booksellers to be criminally charged if they provide “harmful” materials to minors. However, U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks issued a preliminary injunction, which stalls the law from taking effect. A group including the Central Arkansas Library System presented the lawsuit against the State of Arkansas and the ACLU of Arkansas signaled their approval of the injunction. Holly Dickson, the group’s executive director released a statement to the Associated Press: “The question we had to ask was — do Arkansans still legally have access to reading materials? Luckily, the judicial system has once again defended our highly valued liberties.”
According to the American Library Association, in 2022, the United States has seen a record number of attempts to either ban or restrict books. Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the group’s Office For Intellectual Freedom told the Associated Press “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Caldwell-Stone said. “The last two years have been exhausting, frightening, outrage inducing.” In addition to the ALA, PEN America has released its own report covering the last six months of 2022 which details that most of the book bans have been concentrated in 5 states: Florida, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah. More troubling, their report indicates that the book bans are a product of an increasingly vocal minority “Again, and again, the movement to ban books is driven by a vocal minority demanding censorship. At the same time, a 2022 poll found that over 70% of parents oppose book banning. Yet the bans continue.”
The report also indicates that school boards have become battlegrounds in districts and states across the country, an indication that is substantiated by reports from ProPublica. ProPublica has tracked almost 60 events in the first known wide-ranging analysis of what they call school board unrest. The unrest has been led by white, suburban parents who are angry about LGBTQ+ student rights, “obscene” books, and attempts to teach about the history of systemic racism in America. Out of this unrest, it appears, state laws are pushed and created which align with conservative interests and ideals about education. Thus we have laws like the one in Arkansas which are being designed with questionable areas around free speech and constitutional rights. As PEN America states in their report, “The nature of this movement is not one of isolated challenges to books by parents in different communities; rather, it is an organized effort by advocacy groups and state politicians with the ultimate aim of limiting access to certain stories, perspectives, and information.”