(CN) - The estate of legendary author Kurt Vonnegut, three authors and two unnamed high school students sued the Utah Board of Education on Tuesday over the removal of hundreds of books from school libraries, which the plaintiffs in their complaint likened to "a modern-day book burning."
Among the books that have been effectively banned from certain school libraries: Vonnegut's acclaimed 1969 novel "Slaughterhouse-Five," as well as Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" and Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," a Pulitzer Prize nominee.
"Many or all Utah students are denied access to these classic, critically acclaimed novels in their school libraries absent any consideration of the books' literary, scientific, medical, artistic, or political value and without consideration of the age of the
individual readers simply because the books describe what Utah's legislature has defined as 'sexual conduct,'" the plaintiffs say in their complaint.
Elana K. Arnold, Ellen Hopkins, and Amy Reed, all writers of young adult fiction, are also named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Three of Arnold's books, including "What Girls Are Made Of," were banned by the Alpine School District, which also banned five of Hopkins' novels.
In 2022, the Utah Legislature first based its so-called "book removal law," which prohibited "sensitive materials" from school settings including content deemed "harmful to minors" or "pornographic." In practice, that included "any description or representation of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse," according to the plaintiffs' complaint.
Following guidance from the attorney general, the state legislature updated the law in 2024. Among new version gave libraries less discretion to continue to offer objectionable books and automatically removed books from all school libraries that had been banned by three or more school districts. It also added specific guidance for banning books.
For example, the law declared descriptions or depictions of "human genitals in a state of sexual stimulation or arousal" to be obscene, as well as "acts of human masturbation, sexual intercourse, or sodomy."
"These prohibitions," the plaintiffs write in their complaint, "sweep away Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award finalists, New York Times Best Sellers, and critically acclaimed works by branding them 'indecent' and 'pornographic' simply because they contain a sexual reference, regardless of context or a book's value as a whole."
They add: "The Book Removal Law also never asks the most basic question: appropriate for whom? A kindergartner learning to sound out words and a twelfth-grader weeks from graduation are treated identically. As described below, once a book is labeled 'sensitive,' it must be taken from the shelf, including the high school library. There is no recognition that a seventeen-year-old preparing for college, navigating identity, relationships, and the realities of adulthood stands in a fundamentally different place than a five-year-old."
Slaughterhouse-Five has been among the most often banned books in the U.S. in the 55 years since its publication, due in part to its irreverent tone and casual depictions of sex, as well as profanity - though the same could be said for many of his other books. It was even the subject, along with other books, of a landmark 1982 Supreme Court decision, Island Trees School District v. Pico, in which the court ruled "local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to 'prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.'"
Nonetheless, it continues to be banned in scattered districts across the country, including those in Missouri, Tennessee and Texas.
Source: Courthouse News Service
