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Dive Brief:
- The U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday resumed parts of a sweeping anti-LGBTQ+ Iowa education law that had been temporarily paused by a federal district court.
- The appeals ruling in two separate but related cases means that the Iowa statute limiting LGBTQ+ materials “applies only to mandatory parts of the educational curriculum.” That means it “does not require schools to prohibit student expression of LGBTQ+ identity nor does it limit the sponsorship or promotion” of Gay-Straight Alliances according to a statement from Thomas Story, senior staff attorney with ACLU, one of the organizations challenging the law.
- The decision deals a blow to free speech and LGBTQ+ civil rights advocates’ efforts to stop such laws in Iowa and elsewhere that restrict curriculum and, in some cases, other LGBTQ+-inclusive measures like using students’ preferred pronouns.
Dive Insight:
At least 12 states restrict LGBTQ+ discussions in all school curriculum, and four other states limit discussion of “homosexuality” to specific curricula, such as sex education, according to the Movement Advancement Project, which tracks the issue. At least 19 states have one curriculum restriction related to LGBTQ+ issues, according to MAP.
The sweeping Iowa law passed in 2023 includes:
- A ban on all K-12 books containing descriptions or depictions of a sex act.
- A provision that prohibits any program, curriculum, test, survey, questionnaire, promotion or instruction in K-6 relating to “gender theory” or sexual orientation.
- A provision requiring teachers and school staff to report students’ gender identity accommodations, such as pronoun usage differing from those used at birth, to their parents or guardians.
The law was challenged in two cases: one by major publishers including Penguin Random House and another by advocacy organization Iowa Safe Schools.
Parts of the law were blocked in federal district court in 2024 as a result of litigation.
“Throughout the litigation, the State has insisted that this statute applies only to mandatory parts of the educational curriculum,” wrote appeals court Judge Ralph Erickson in the April 6 opinion. “Reading the plain language, we cannot say the State’s assertion is wrong.”
The ruling also requires that schools report to parents or guardians if a student specifically requests a school accommodation for the stated purpose of affirming a gender identity different from their registration forms.
“Even though the statute does not define ‘accommodation,’ it is not vague,” the circuit judge wrote. “The law is clear enough that a person of ordinary intelligence can reasonably understand it. The district court erred when it found otherwise.”
Lawsuits hoping to stop Iowa’s law and those challenging laws in other states are doing so partly on the grounds that they are vague, broad or both, leading educators to overcomply and self-censor out of fear.
“This ruling is a setback, but it is not the end of this fight,” said Nathan Maxwell, senior attorney at Lambda Legal’s midwest regional office, which filed one of the two lawsuits in Iowa.
With multiple other similar lawsuits working their way through the courts nationwide, the issue of book restrictions is expected to eventually make it to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Last year, the high court declined to hear a similar case out of Llano County, Texas, that reached the Supreme Court after the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed state and local government restrictions on books to stand.
The case, Little v. Llano County, turned on whether book removal decisions — which have swept across public schools and libraries in the past few years — are subject to the First Amendment’s free speech protections.
The case would have been the first on book bans to be heard in the Supreme Court since 1982, according to PEN America.
The Iowa and Texas cases are part of a flurry of lawsuits resulting from book removal decisions by schools and libraries in recent years.
