A federal court has struck down an Arkansas law that would have imposed criminal penalties on librarians and booksellers who made “harmful” materials available to minors.
Section 1 of the law, known as Act 372, would have made “furnishing a harmful item to a minor” a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail, while Section 5 established a new procedure for handling book challenges in public libraries. Both sections were ruled unconstitutional.
Judge Timothy L. Brooks of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas had imposed a temporary injunction on these two sections in August 2023 (see “Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Arkansas Law”). In his final ruling, issued on December 23, 2024, he wrote, “Section 1 violates the due process rights of professional librarians and booksellers and the First Amendment rights of library and bookstore patrons; and Section 5 empowers local elected officials to censor library books they feel are not ‘appropriate’ for citizens to read and allows (if not encourages) content- and viewpoint-based restrictions on protected speech without any compelling governmental purpose.”
In his opinion, Brooks noted that state law already made it a crime to provide obscene materials to minors, but that librarians had special immunity. “Up until the passage of Act 372, it appears that Arkansas’s more pressing concern with respect to librarians was that they be insulated from meritless claims and time-wasting prosecutions,” Brooks wrote, adding, “Times have changed.” Act 372 not only removed the immunity clause but broadened the law, using the vague terms “harmful to minors,” without distinguishing between different age groups, and “make available,” which could mean a librarian could be prosecuted if a child saw content displayed in the adult or YA section of the library. Because of this lack of definition, booksellers and librarians would have to either ban minors or put some books in adults-only areas, which, the judge said, would be “logistically and financially untenable and contrary to the core purpose of public libraries and community bookstores.”
In a 2023 column (see “Talk Back”), comics retailer Michael Tierney spelled out the danger the law presented to comics shops, referencing a Dark Horse Comics’ Conan series that had some “adult” imagery. “Retailers don’t have time to read every page of every book,” he wrote, “and copies of this particular series are all across the country, hiding in the cheap bins like ticking bombs waiting to explode in the wrong hands. Most retailers have no idea of the risk they are being exposed to.”
“That is the core of my concern about SB 81, is that someone could go to jail over something they had no idea about.”
Both Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Attorney General Tim Griffin said they would appeal the ruling, according to CBS News.
Source: ICV2
