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The US District Court for the Western District of Arkansas today declared Arkansas Act 372 unconstitutional in an opinion indicating that the law is overbroad and void for vagueness, and permanently enjoined its enforcement.

The Arkansas law would have subjected librarians and bookstore owners to criminal prosecution for making materials available on library and bookstore shelves that could be deemed harmful to younger minors and conceivably available for younger minors to view, and mandated a library book challenge procedure in public libraries whereby individuals may challenge books based on “appropriateness” (an undefined term not based on constitutional standards). In addition, review boards would have been allowed or even invited to engage in viewpoint and content-based discrimination. The ruling came in response to the filed by a coalition of plaintiffs that included local Arkansas libraries, as well as authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians, and readers.

In today’s decision rejecting the law, the court wrote,

“If the General Assembly’s purpose in passing Section 1 was to protect younger minors from accessing inappropriate sexual content in libraries and bookstores, the law will only achieve that end at the expense of everyone else’s First Amendment rights. The law deputizes librarians and booksellers as the agents of censorship; when motivated by the fear of jail time, it is likely they will shelve only books fit for young children and segregate or discard the rest.”

This decision follows the court’s previous grant of a , in which it found plaintiffs likely to succeed on the merits. Defendants declined to appeal that decision.

Joint Statement of the Organizational Plaintiffs

Allison Hill, the CEO of the American Booksellers Association; Maria Pallante, President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers; Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild; Deborah Caldwell- Stone, the Executive Director of the Freedom to Read Foundation; Jeff Trexler, the Interim Director of Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; Pearl’s Books; Kandi West, Lia Lent and Lynne Phillips, owners of WordsWorth Books:

“Together with librarians, authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians, and readers everywhere, we applaud the Court’s carefully crafted decision upholding the constitutional right to read.”

Plaintiffs

The plaintiffs in the suit include the American Booksellers Association, Association of American Publishers, Authors Guild, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Freedom to Read Foundation, and two local bookstores – WordsWorth Books in Little Rock and Pearl’s Books in Fayetteville, as well as a consortium of local libraries, librarians, and library advocates, which includes Fayetteville Public Library, Eureka Springs Carnegie Public Library, Central Arkansas Library System (CALS), Arkansas Library Association, Advocates for All Arkansas Libraries, Nate Coulter (Executive Director of CALS); Adam Webb, a librarian from Garland County; Olivia Farrell, an adult CALS patron; Hayden Kirby, a 17-year-old CALS patron; and Leta Caplinger, a patron of the Crawford County Public Library.

Counsel

Counsel for the various plaintiffs include of Fuqua Campbell, P.A.; of Dentons; of the ACLU of Arkansas; and Benjamin Seel and Will Bardwell of .