PRH, authors file lawsuit against Iowa book banning law

In the US, Penguin Random House and the Iowa State Education Association have joined with four authors and five additional plaintiffs to file a federal lawsuit against Iowa to block the book ban provisions of SF 496, ‘the state’s sweeping new law that critics say seeks to silence LGBTQ+ students and bans books with sexual or LGBTQ+ content’, reports Publishers Weekly.

Authors Laurie Halse Anderson, John Green, Malinda Lo, and Jodi Picoult, who all have had books banned or removed in Iowa, are among the named plaintiffs in the suit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa on 30 November.

‘Senate File 496 requires the removal of fiction and non-fiction books alike, depriving Iowa students from encountering literature that portrays and describes critical aspects of the human experience,’ argued the plaintiffs in the complaint.

Referring specifically to one portion of SF 496, the complaint continued: ‘In practice this prohibition appears to have been intended to apply, and has been applied, to remove only books containing LGBTQ+ themes or characters or those written by authors within the LGBTQ+ community’, meaning that ‘it discriminates against LGBTQ+ viewpoints and authors’.

This suit follows another federal lawsuit filed against the law by Lambda Legal and the ACLU of Iowa, alongside several other named plaintiffs, brought on behalf of Iowa Safe Schools, an organisation supporting LGBTQIA+ youth and allies, as well as seven Iowa families and eight students.

Category: International news