By: Ava Malkin
Volume IX – Issue II – Spring 2024
I. Introduction and Background
i. Definitions
The First Amendment of the United States is as follows: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” [1] This is a right afforded to all American citizens to freely speak, publish, protest, and express themselves in various formats.
Additionally, the Fourteenth Amendment states, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” [2] In other words, the Due Process Clause finds that a person cannot be deprived of their liberties or their property without legal reasoning, while the Equal Protection Clause finds that the government cannot deny American individuals of their equality, and they cannot discriminate against specific individuals under the law.
One of the formats protected by the freedom of expression is writing, suggesting that American authors have the freedom to publish their work, voice their opinions, and share their experiences, and this aforementioned freedom of expression often conflicts with writing via book bans. Book bans are defined by PEN America, a 501(c)(3) organization comprised of 7,500 novelists, journalists, nonfiction writers, editors, poets, essayists, playwrights, publishers, translators, agents, and other writing professionals dedicated to preserving the freedom to write, as “any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by lawmakers or other governmental officials, that leads to a previously accessible book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished.” [3] In other words, book banning prevents readers from interacting with literature that specific authority figures, including parents, community, and educators, deem to be unacceptable. While “unacceptable” fails to maintain a universal definition, ban instigators must provide a line of reasoning for why they wish to censor certain literature. The Fourteenth Amendment comes into play when individuals censor literature without proper, legally justified reasoning.
The book-banning process begins when an individual or a group initiates a challenge or an objection to a specific book for its content. From there, the book is removed and restricted from being read in libraries and classrooms, or its availability is limited within the district. In a legal sense, this banning occurs when the ban initiator provides an objective justification for why this book should be banned; many legal authorities utilize the Miller test from Miller v. California (1973), which states that a book can be banned if it lacks value or if an average person would find the work to be obscene or offensive. [4]
Many literary, psychological, educational, and legal professionals are concerned with these bans' quantity and severity. Legal scholar Anna Beavers dubbs book bans “an effort to control school curriculums,” allowing state officials and school boards to take advantage of “[t]he obscurity of obscenity law” and manipulate the content of books to fit within the Constitution’s areas of non-protection. [5] Deborah Caldweall-Stone, the director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association, also employed legal reasoning, citing legal cases to express the unconstitutional nature of bans, the illogical nature of these bans for children’s intellectual growth, and the contradictory nature of bans for librarian and educator responsibilities. In a letter to the United States House of Representatives, Caldweall-Stone stated that these censorship efforts not only hamper the promotion of literature but also infringe upon the constitutional rights of readers by preventing them from choosing the materials and forming their own opinions and viewpoints. [6] Susan L. Webb, an author and a writer for The First Amendment Encyclopedia, corroborates this concern, calling book banning “the most widespread form of censorship in the United States:” [7] The term “censorship” in and of itself implies a direct contradiction to the First Amendment, and the prevalence of these bans is beginning to cause grave concern for educational and legal communities.
ii. Prevalence of Book Bans & Justifications
To entirely comprehend how widespread and worrying this censorship is in today’s society, it is essential to delve into the statistics and lines of reasoning for banning books. PEN America tracks book bans at the district level, recording the data and analyzing prevalence and common patterns. During the first half of the 2022-2023 school year alone, meaning from the mere five months between July 2022 and December 2022, PEN America recorded 1,477 instances of book bans. This alarming number is only increasing from years past, with a 28% increase from the 1,149 bans that occurred from January 2022 to June 2022. 3 This is not limited to one state or one district that more commonly appears in news sites; instead, PEN America found that 66 school districts in 21 states experienced book bans, including Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah, South Carolina, Michigan, and more.
The 1,477 instances of bans during this past school year affected 874 distinct book titles. PEN America states that the most frequently banned titles include Gender Queer: A Memoir (15 bans), Flamer (15 bans), Tricks (13 bans), The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel (12 bans), Crank (12 bans), Solid (11 bans), Push (11 bans), A Court of Mist and Fury (11 bans), This Book is Gay (10 bans), The Bluest Eye (10 bans), and Milk and Honey (10 bans). [8] The American Library Association corroborates these findings, adding more titles to this diverse list, as this organization monitors the number of challenges yearly. In 2022, the American Library Association reported the top 13 most challenged books included Gender Queer: A Memoir (151 challenges), All Boys Aren’t Blue (86 challenges), The Bluest Eye (73 challenges), Flamer (62 challenges), Looking for Alaska (55 challenges), The Perks of Being a Wallflower (55 challenges), Lawn Boy (54 challenges), The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (52 challenges), Out of Darkness (50 challenges), A Court of Mist and Fury (48 challenges), Crank (48 challenges), Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (48 challenges), and This Book is Gay (48 challenges). [9] This list of titles is only a fraction of the total number of books being banned today and only a small insight into the author’s voices being silenced.
As previously stated, ban initiators must have specific justifications for why they wish to remove a book from circulation or use in classrooms. PEN America investigated the categories of this rationale, finding the top seven content-related reasons to be violence/physical abuse (385 titles), health/wellbeing (331 titles), grief/death (264 titles), race/racism (260 titles), LBTQIA+ (229 titles), sexual content (211 titles), pregnancy/abortion/sexual assault (150 titles). [7] Once again, the American Library Association corroborated these findings, with their most challenged books being questioned for LGBTQIA+ content, sexual content, drug use, profanity, and abuse. [8] So, for the ban to take place, ban instigators must utilize these justifications, which could cause conflict in terms of content-based restrictions on the First Amendment for both readers and writers.
iii. History of Book Bans
Legal professional A.D. Noorani argues that despite the Constitution guaranteeing the freedom of expression, central and state governments are empowered “to ban and seize books on unconstitutional grounds,” even going as far as to call book banning “a civilized form of the vice of book-burning.” [10] On this line of reasoning, it is valuable to consider the origins of book bans, especially the fact that they were not entirely legal nor justified in the first place.
Book bans can be traced back to 212 B.C. when Chinese emperor Shih Huang Ti buried alive 460 Confucian scholars for his dislike of their writing of history and burned all the books in his kingdom. Roman emperors later exiled authors such as Ovid for their work and prevented reading classics such as The Oddesy. The banishings, burnings, and bans only worsened over time, with Egyptians, Italians, Britons, and more leading book bonfires and prohibiting titles because of religious and political leaders’ unfavorable opinions about specific historical and opinion-related content. This even expanded to scientific content, with Galileo’s solar system theories being banned by the Catholic Church in the early 1600s and Origin of Species by Charles Darwin being banned in Trinity Colege, Tennessee, Yugoslavia, and Greece in the early 1900s. Since 212 B.C., a multitude of classic titles, including I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Diary of Anne Frank, Alice in Wonderland, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and Huckleberry Fin, were censored simply because some sort of authority figure disliked them. Allowing the simple distaste of a book’s content to prevent it from being read entirely transforms into a practice that is quite dangerous for its contraction of the First Amendment rights of authors and readers.
II. Historical Precedents
Many United States courts have debated whether schools or districts should be allowed to prevent reading particular texts. The following descriptions provide insight into a few significant cases concerning book bans, specifically in educational contexts and regarding obscenity.
i. Cases Concerning Bans in an Educational Context
In Evans v. Selma Union High School District of Fresno County (1924), the plaintiff and appellant, Elbert L. Evans, argued that the school should not prevent purchasing 12 copies of the King James Bible for the high school library. The lower courts, specifically the Superior Court of Fresno County, initially ruled in favor of the school, enjoining the purchase of the bible because “the book was not a publication of sectarian, partisan, or denominational character,” meaning the act of withholding the purchase did not violate the state’s constitution. However, Evans appealed to the Supreme Court of California, which ruled that the library should be permitted to buy the copies because the bibles were purchased for reference, not devotional exercise, thereby implying that “[t]he mere act of purchasing a book to be added to the school library does not carry with it any implication of the adoption of the theory or dogma contained therein.” So, in other words, Evans demonstrated that books cannot be prohibited simply for the worry of what their content might cause, as the physical texts themselves do not inherently imply the adoption of their content. [11]
In A Quantity of Copies of Books v. Kansas (1964), the state attorney general authorized the seizure, impounding, and burning of books determined to be obscene, and 1,715 books were taken before an official obscenity hearing. A business that had their novels taken brought the case to court, arguing such procedures were constitutionally insignificant because they failed to safeguard against the suppression of books that were not obscene. The Kansas Supreme Court upheld the seizure and destruction of books. The attorney general cited Marcus v. Search Warrant (1961), a case in which they provided police with the authority to seize materials they considered obscene, to convey the necessity of a seizure procedure in Kansas. [12] However, the Supreme Court of the United States found the rationale of the business to be correct, holding that the confiscation of these titles was unconstitutional because it violated the First Amendment. In fact, the Court even cited Kingsley Books Inc. to highlight the dangers of not holding an obscenity hearing, thereby emphasizing the necessity for such proceedings and the importance of unconditionally guaranteed speech that Justice Black proposed in Smith. So, A Quantity of Copies of Books found that the seizure and destruction of books accused of being obscene are constitutionally insufficient because, especially without any hearing, it does not protect the freedom of expression. [13]
In Minarcini v. Strongsville City School District (1976), students took to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio to argue that the defendants, a city school district, the school board, and the superintendent, violated their First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights by refusing to approve certain books and removing texts from libraries. This district court dismissed some of the student plaintiffs’ complaints about rights violations, and the students appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. This appeals court affirmed in part and reversed in part. The court held that the students’ constitutional rights were not violated by the school board’s control over their curriculum and books; however, they reversed the removal of books, as this violated the plaintiffs’ First Amendment right to know. [14] So, Minarcini held that although school boards can determine classroom materials, removing texts from libraries was concerning for students' First Amendment rights.
In Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico (1982), students in junior high school and high school brought an action to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, arguing that their First Amendment rights were violated by their school’s removal of books from libraries for being “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy.” The district court, after struggling to determine whether a trial was necessary, granted a summary judgment in favor of the board, as they did not act on discriminatory religious principles, but instead in concern of their education, meaning even though the removal was content-based, this could not be considered a constitutional violation. The court of appeals reversed and sent the case back for trial. The Supreme Court of the United States affirmed the judgment of the court of appeals, with three justices stating that the First Amendment includes the right to information and learning and another justice saying that the state did not maintain the authority to deny access to such information because of the political or social perspectives discussed in them. [15] So, this case determined that it is not necessarily permissible for school districts to prevent reading books based on their content and preventing learning via censorship can be considered a First Amendment violation.
ii. Cases Outlining Obscene Content & Limits
These significant cases questioning book bans, particularly concerning the First and Fourteenth Amendments, are not the only legal debates surrounding this censorship. Many cases have focused on one specific reason for banning books: obscenity.
In Kingsley Books, Inc. v. Brown (1957), the court questioned a New York statute that allowed for the destruction of materials perceived to be obscene after an expedited hearing. Booksellers argued that this statute was unconstitutional, as it violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by not allowing for a criminal trial before an injunction and the destruction of their materials. These booksellers used this constitutional line of reasoning to argue the statute deprived them of their books without an opportunity to defend themselves. Even with this rationale, a state trial judge upheld the New York state law, calling presumably obscene books “dirt for dirt’s sake” and demanding that they be destroyed. Kingsley Books, Inc. et al. appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which upheld the state law, arguing that the statute did not violate the booksellers’ rights. In other words, the Supreme Court of the United States found that a state was permitted to destroy materials they determined to be obscene as long as there was a hearing that clarified the obscenity of the content. Justice Felix Frankfurter also noted that the freedom of speech does not protect obscene material. [16,17]
In Smith v. California (1959), Eleazer Smith, a 72-year-old Los Angeles bookstore owner, argued that his First Amendment rights were violated after being held criminally liable and sentenced to 30 days of jail time after selling Sweeter Than Life by Mark Tyron in his stores. Smith claimed he had never read the book and was not aware it was considered to be obscene and prevented from sale by California state law. The Supreme Court of the United States agreed that this California law was unconstitutionally limiting access to literary materials. Justice William J. Brennan Jr. also deemed the law too vague for a reasonable person of ordinary intelligence to interpret, meaning it would be too difficult for a layperson or even a bookseller to determine a book’s alleged obscenity. Justice Huge L. Black provided a concurring opinion that argued that the First Amendment provides absolute freedom of speech and freedom of the press, thereby emphasizing how the bans violate constitutional rights. So, Smith found that this law preventing the selling of obscene books was not specific enough and violated the First Amendment. [18]
In Miller v. California (1973), Marvin Miller, the owner of a pornographic film and book business, mass-mailed – meaning sent to people who did not request – a brochure of sexually explicit activities. After some recipients complained to the police, Miller was convicted of violating a California statute that prevented the intentional dissemination of obscene content. This case questioned if the First Amendment protected the distribution of obscene material. The Supreme Court of the United States held that the freedom of expression did not extend to obscene materials. The Court utilized the tests for obscenity from Roth v. United States (1957) and Memoirs v. Massachusetts (1966) to clarify the definition of obscenity. [19] The Court created the guidelines that content “will be judged by its impact on an average person” that is “applying contemporary community standards,” and this average person would determine “whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law” and “whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” [20] So, Miller helped construct a test for obscenity that confirms that the First Amendment does not protect the distribution of obscene materials like Miller in this case.
III. Current Cases
Despite these cases outlining ban guidelines, determining potential First and Fourteenth Amendment violations, and arguing against truly obscene content, many scholars still express concern for book bans and constitutional freedoms. It is essential to consider the current cases debating the constitutionality of book bans to comprehend the subject and its legal implications entirely.
In Florida, plaintiffs PEN America, Penguin Random House, banned authors, and parents, sued the Escambia County School Board for removing books from library shelves, claiming it violates their First Amendment rights. In a January 10th, 2024 hearing, U.S. District Judge Kent Wetherell issued a ruling that allowed the case to proceed, finding the state’s argument that bans are immune from the First Amendment illogical and unjustifiable. PEN America representative Katie Blankenship expressed excitement for this progress towards high-quality education; plaintiffs’ legal counsel Lynn Oberlander also expressed gratitude, stating, “We are gratified that the Judge recognized that books cannot be removed from school library shelves simply because of the views they espouse, and are looking forward to moving forward with this case to protect the constitutional rights of the plaintiffs.” [21]
In Iowa, in December of 2023, The Iowa State Education Association, Penguin House Random, four authors (Laurie Halse Anderson, John Green, Malinda Lo, and Jodi Picoult), teachers, and a parent filed a federal lawsuit hoping to prevent book bans for sexual content in K-12 schools and to declare an Iowa state law unconstitutional for violating their First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The Iowa law debated here was Senate File 496, which prevents young students from interacting with books describing sexual relations or orientations. 22 Nihar Malaviya, a Penguin Random House representative, stated that the goal of such lawsuits is to allow for “the free flow of ideas and perspectives that is a hallmark of American democracy,” recognizing that “not every book [they] publish will be for every reader, but [they] must protect the right for all Americans, including students, parents, caregivers, teachers, and librarians, to have equitable access to books and to continue to decide what they read.” [23]
Florida and Iowa are not the only states to question the constitutionality of book bans, highlighting the unjust nature of censorship for authors, educators, readers, parents, and more. In Alaska, in November of 2023, the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska and Northern Justice filed a lawsuit against the Mat-Su School district for banning 56 books from libraries, including The Bluest Eye, The Kite Runner, and Slaughterhouse 5; the plaintiffs argued that such removal is against their First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights. In Arkansas, a group of 17 plaintiffs filed a suit against an Arkansaw statute, Act 372, which prevents librarians and booksellers from intentionally selling books that contain information about LGBTQIA+, sexuality, or racism to minors; this lawsuit temporarily blocked the law from being placed into practice in August of 2023. In Texas, a group of booksellers sued because of a Texas statute, House Bill 900 or the Texas READER Act, which required the banning, removal, and even labeling of certain books; the courts initially ruled with the law, and the plaintiffs have since appealed and are waiting on another decision from the appeals court. [24]
These cases from late 2023 into early 2024 are just a few instances of the extensive legal solicitude surrounding book bans, signifying potential progress in states like Florida, Iowa, Alaska, Arkansas, and Texas, which have begun to stand up for their constitutional rights. By highlighting the ways in which authors are silenced, children’s learning is hampered, publishing companies are suffering, and parents are disagreeing, cases like these continue to suggest that book banning is a violation of the freedom of expression and sometimes even the Due Process Clause.
IV. Personal Perspective
i. First Amendment Violation
The present paper is intended to investigate the constitutional consideration of book bans. After delving into previous and current cases, I entirely believe that book bans violate the First Amendment rights of authors, readers, publishers, and parents.
In order for an action to violate the First Amendment, one must consider if there is government action. In terms of book bans, there is apparent governmental interference in that districts are the ones transforming challenges into bans and removing texts from libraries. Next, one must question whether the proposed violation affects speech. In this case, with the banned content being written word, whether that be the nonfiction perspectives of authors or the fictional tales of the writer’s imagination, is undoubtedly speech. Now that it is clear that this is a government restriction on speech, it is essential also to note that this book banning is entirely a content-based practice. As previously stated, Anna Beavers finds book bans to be an effort to control educational materials based on their content, thereby categorizing them as content-based speech regulations. I agree with Beaver’s perspective, as the bans rely upon a justification that the content is inappropriate for readers, thereby placing this into a content-based violation.
Finally, to legally be considered a First Amendment right violation, the “speech” – in this case, book bans – cannot fall into a lesser protected class, which includes fighting words, true threats, defamation, and obscenity. [25] This is where an extensive debate could occur, particularly surrounding the definition of obscenity. In my opinion, book bans do not fall into the lesser protected class of fighting words, as they do not present a direct and immediate danger to readers or writers; this form of literary censorship also cannot categorize itself as a true threat, as it is not intended to incite lawless action, nor is it likely to produce this action as outlined by Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969). [26] Evans even recognized this when stating that a book cannot be banned for the concern of what its content may or may not cause. 12 Book bans also cannot be considered defamation or slander, as the act of removing or preventing the reader of a book is not damaging the reputation of any readers; in fact, if anything, the actual defamation here occurs for authors and publishing companies, as their reputations could be tainted if they have the reputation of possessing a banned book. However, the conflicting category, as outlined by many historical cases such as Kingsley Books, Inc., Smith, A Quantity of Copies of Books, Miller, and Pico, is obscenity. Although Miller seemed to provide some sort of guidelines for the definition and classification of obscenity, the idea that “sexual conduct” is not permitted to be read is entirely contradictory to the underlying principles of the First Amendment, which, as recognized in Pico, extends to the right to learn. Therefore, while I am in no way attempting to argue that obscenity should not be considered a lesser protected class, I am arguing that banning books remains a First Amendment violation even though this freedom of expression does not protect obscenity; this is because (1) not all book bans are focused on sexual or “obscene” content, and (2) even the bans focused on such content are utilizing a broad definition of obscenity via “sexual conduct” which contradicts the First Amendment in that it strips students from their right to interact with diverse information and it strips writers from their right to share their perspectives and stories. While some might argue that book bans infringe constitutional rights on a context-dependent basis, as some “obscenity” rulings could technically fall under unprotected speech, I venture to argue that all ban justifications should fall under protected speech, thereby constructing the perspective that all book bans violate the First Amendment.
ii. Fourteenth Amendment Violation
While the more obvious consideration here is the First Amendment and the freedom of expression, there are also major violation considerations concerning book bans and the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees that a State cannot “abridge the privileges” of individuals, nor can they “deprive any person of” their liberty and property. [3] While books in a library and textbooks in a classroom are not inherently considered someone’s property (meaning students cannot necessarily utilize the argument that their property is being taken away) books are the initial property of writers and publishers, meaning preventing their content from being read and preventing their future revenue could be extended to a Fourteenth Amendment violation. Additionally, as argued in the previous section, banning books can be considered a First Amendment right violation, thereby depriving writers, publishing companies, and readers of one of their major liberties, something the Fourteenth Amendment promises not to do. I would also contend that book bans contradict the equal protection portion of the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees explicitly that the government cannot “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” [3] Justification for book bans, especially those that rely on race and religion, would be reviewed with strict scrutiny, lacking any compelling governmental interest that would allow courts to accept such bans on literature. [27] Therefore, book bans could even be considered a form of discrimination for some featured identities, writers, and audiences, strengthening the argument that this censorship entirely violates the Fourteenth Amendment.
iii. Potential Solutions
Now that it is clear that there is a strong probability of constitutional violations via book bans, it is essential to consider how states can counteract this. While some changes may start with the aforementioned court cases, it is valuable to discuss how to solve the violations book bans create.
Some scholars, including literary and legal scholar Caldweall-Stone, argue that parents should have a say in their own child’s literature; however, one must simultaneously recognize the blanket nature of book banning, thereby indicating that one parent deciding on acceptable literature for an entire district infringes upon other parents’ right to choose for their own children. [7] This implies that the current practices of book banning are not only a First Amendment right violation for authors but there are also further infringement implications for readers and parents. So, to mitigate this blanket issue, courts can implement a system where parents can have an opinion on their own children’s education, thereby constructing a more personalized and less generalized practice of banning. This would also potentially be more agreeable to ban instigators, as they maintain their viewpoints for their own children, while also not forcing these perspectives and educational practices on other families.
On the other hand, writer Robert Kim, recognizing that legal cases concerning book bans often look to content-based justifications, suggested that courts might begin to “adopt a more deferential role to local school officials” as the number of bans rises. Kim questioned if schools will be able to maintain an unbiased perspective to ensure a diverse education within their individual communities. [28] However, this implies the same blanket ban/generalizing issue as current parental bans. Again, courts can suggest or even mandate that schools survey families, parents, and students about their desired content. This way, school districts can remediate potential First and Fourteenth Amendment violations by not eliminating the book-banning practice altogether but instead making it more individualized, thereby allowing readers to learn about diverse content if they wish, parents to insert their opinions on their child’s education, and authors/publishers’ perspectives to be shared to target audiences that want to interact with their content.
Endnotes
[1] U.S. Const. amend. 1
[2] U.S. Const. amend. 14
[3] PEN America. “Banned in the USA: Rising School Book Bans Threaten Free Expression and Students’ First Amendment Rights (April 2022).” PEN America, December 20, 2022. https://pen.org/banned-in-the-usa/.
[4] Yeban, Jade. Banning books and the law. Accessed March 17, 2024. https://www.findlaw.com/education/student-rights/banning-books-and-the-law.html.
[5] Beavers, Anna. "Balancing Interests: Harmful Bans & Harmful Books." (2023).
[6] Caldweall-Stone, Deborah. “Letter to House Oversight Committee Opposing Book Bans and Challenges to Free Speech.” ALAIR Home, April 5, 2022. https://alair.ala.org/handle/11213/18004.
[7] Webb, Susan L. “Book Banning.” The Free Speech Center, February 19, 2024. https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/book-banning/.
[8] PEN America. “2023 Banned Books Update: Banned in the USA.” PEN America, August 21, 2023. https://pen.org/report/banned-in-the-usa-state-laws-supercharge-book-suppression-in-schools/.
[9] American Library Association. “Top 13 Most Challenged Books of 2022.” Advocacy, Legislation & Issues, January 31, 2024. https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10.
[10] Noorani, A. G. “Book Banning.” Economic and Political Weekly 42, no. 48 (2007): 10–11. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40276707.
[11] Evans v. Selma Union High Sch. Dist., 193 Cal. 54, 222 P. 801 (1924)
[12] Kraft, Emilie S. “A Quantity of Books v. Kansas (1964).” The Free Speech Center, January 1, 2009. https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/a-quantity-of-books-v-kansas/.
[13] A Quantity of Copies of Books v. Kansas, 378 U.S. 205, 206, 84 S. Ct. 1723, 1724 (1964)
[14] Minarcini v. Strongsville City Sch. Dist., 541 F.2d 577, 578 (6th Cir. 1976)
[15] Bd. of Educ. v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 102 S. Ct. 2799 (1982)
[16] KINGSLEY v. BROWN, 354 U.S. 436, 77 S. Ct. 1325 (1957)
[17] "Kingsley Books, Inc. v. Brown." Oyez. Accessed March 17, 2024. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1956/107.
[18] Purdy, Elizabeth R. “Smith v. California (1959).” The Free Speech Center, January 1, 2009. https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/smith-v-california/.
[19] "Miller v. California." Oyez. Accessed March 17, 2024. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-73.
[20] Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 16, 93 S. Ct. 2607, 2610 (1973)
[21] PEN America. “In Win for Free Expression, Judge Rules Lawsuit Challenging Escambia County, FL Book Bans Can Move Forward.” PEN America, January 12, 2024. https://pen.org/press-release/in-win-for-free-expression-judge-rules-lawsuit-challenging-escambia-county-fl-book-bans-can-move-forward/.
[22] Gruber-Miller, Stephen, and Thao Nguyen. “Largest US Publisher, Bestselling Authors Sue over Iowa Book Ban.” USA Today, December 1, 2023. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/12/01/penguin-random-house-iowa-book-ban/71760309007/.
[23] St. Martin, Emily. “From Iowa to Florida, National Lawsuits against Local Book Bans Begin to Gain Traction.” Los Angeles Times, January 11, 2024. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2024-01-11/from-iowa-to-florida-lawsuits-against-book-bans-begin-to-gain-traction.
[24] Jensen, Kelly. “Lawsuits Are the Way Forward: A Look at Every Current Book Ban Lawsuit.” BOOK RIOT, December 4, 2023. https://bookriot.com/book-ban-lawsuits/.
[25] Congressional Research Service. CRS reports. Accessed March 18, 2024. https://crsreports.congress.gov/.
[26] Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 89 S. Ct. 1827 (1969)
[27] Cornell Law School. “Strict Scrutiny.” Legal Information Institute, n.d. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/strict_scrutiny#:~:text=Overview,sues%20the%20government%20for%20discrimination.
[28] Kim, Robert. “Under the Law: Banning Books: Unlawful Censorship, or within a School’s Discretion?” Phi Delta Kappan 103, no. 7 (March 28, 2022): 62–64. https://doi.org/10.1177/00317217221092240.