Penguin Random House LLC v. Robbins

Iowa’s Senate File 496, passed in May 2023, banned public schools from carrying any books that depict a “sex act,” defined broadly. 

Two different lawsuits challenged the law: one filed by Iowa Safe Schools, educators, and students, and another by Penguin Random House, the Iowa State Education Association, a student, and several other publishers, authors, and educators. In a combined order, the federal district court halted enforcement of SF496, concluding the law “is incredibly broad,” “has resulted in the removal of hundreds of books from school libraries, including . . . classic works of fiction,” and is “unlikely to satisfy the First Amendment under any standard.” After Iowa appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, FIRE filed an amicus curiae brief arguing the district court was correct. The Eighth Circuit reversed the preliminary injunction, but held that the government’s curation of public-school libraries is not government speech. 

On remand, the district court again held that the law violated the First Amendment and blocked its enforcement for a second time. As before, the State appealed. FIRE submitted a second amicus curiae brief in the Eighth Circuit, urging the court to affirm the district court’s preliminary judgment. FIRE argues that Iowa’s law ignores centuries of hard-won lessons about the value of free expression and the dangers of government censorship. We explain that public-school libraries are not instruments of government speech, but unique institutions that serve as repositories of knowledge and forums for intellectual exploration. While states have an interest in ensuring public-school library materials are age-appropriate, SF496’s across-the-board ban on a broad category of content does not serve that interest because it requires schools to apply the same standards for a high school senior and an elementary school student. Attempts to impose such top-down, politically motivated control over their collections violate students’ First Amendment right to access information.

The Eighth Circuit vacated the second preliminary injunction and returned the case for the district court to resolve on the merits. Relying on the Supreme Court’s opinion in Hazelwood v Kuhlmeier, the Court held that “[i]n the context of school-sponsored speech, actions ‘reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns’ do not run afoul of the First Amendment.” So for books the challenged Iowa law restricts, the court held, it suffices that under Bethel v. Fraser––another Supreme Court case––and the Eighth Circuit opinion in Henerey v. City of St. Charles, School, “schools have a legitimate pedagogical interest in prohibiting speech involving sexual content.”