Not much has happened in Read Freely Alabama’s lawsuit against the Autauga-Prattville Public Library since the plaintiffs asked for a preliminary injunction in October.
But the plaintiffs added a new filing last week, arguing that a decision in a similar 10th Circuit Court case in Colorado supports their request for a preliminary injunction against the library.
In Crookshanks et al. v. Elizabeth School District, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction to the plaintiffs who argued the school system had violated students’ first amendment rights by removing books due to “sensitive” and political topics.
“In granting a preliminary injunction that prohibits the removal of library books, the Crookshanks court concluded that defendants’ ‘argument—that its decisions as to the library contents are government speech immune from First Amendment scrutiny—finds little support in the caselaw,'” counsel for Read Freely wrote in a filing in the suit on May 8. “The court therefore ‘reject[ed] the [defendant’s] invitation to extend government-speech precedents . . . something the Supreme Court has expressly discouraged.’ As the court explained, ‘[n]o one would seriously argue that placing [Mein Kampf] in a school library constitutes government speech.‘”
Int he summer of 2024, the Elizabeth School District formed a committee to review library collections for “sensitive” materials on topics such as “racism/discrimination,” “religious viewpoints,” “sexual content,” “profanity/obscenity,” “graphic violence,” and “ideations of self-harm or mental illness.” More than 100 books were labeled sensitive, with parents being allowed to opt their children out of checking out those materials.
But the school went further and decided to ban 19 books within its catalog.
“These books were primarily by or about people of color and/or LGBTQ+ people and award-winning novels that explore race, inequality, and the challenges of adolescence,” an ACLU article on the case states.
Several of the books banned in Elizabeth School District—Looking for Alaska, The Bluest Eye, The Hate U Give among them—are among the books removed in Prattville or targeted for removal statewide by groups like Clean Up Alabama and Moms for Liberty.
In the case of the Eliabeth School District, the judge found that the motivation for the removal of the books is likely unconstitutional because officials removed the books because they “disagreed with the views expressed in the books and to further their preferred political orthodoxy.”
Read Freely likewise argues that the policies passed at the Prattville library, and the books removed from shelves, were targeted in pursuit of political orthodoxy.
Judge Myron Thompson is still weighing whether to grant a preliminary injunction in the case.
