Judge Blocks Iowa Book Ban, ‘Don’t Say LGBTQ’ Law – By Jessica Corbett (Common Dreams) / Dec 29, 2023
“We deserve to be able to express ourselves safely at school and we deserve to see ourselves in media at school, especially in books,” said an eighth grade student who joined one of the lawsuits.
A U.S. federal judge on Friday blocked key parts of what critics called a “sweeping Iowa law that seeks to silence LGBTQ+ students, erase any recognition of LGBTQ+ people from public schools, and bans books with sexual or LGBTQ+ content.”
Judge Stephen Locher determined that none of the plaintiffs in a pair of cases filed against Senate File 496 has standing to challenge the provision requiring school districts to notify parents if a child seeks an accommodation relating to gender identity, including the use of pronouns that does not match registration records.
However, Locher issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of a ban on any book containing “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act”—except for the Bible—in all public school classrooms and libraries, and a prohibition on “any program, curriculum, test, survey, questionnaire, promotion, or instruction relating to gender identity or sexual orientation” in kindergarten through sixth grade.
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