Judge: Arkansas Can't Jail Librarians For Doing Their Jobs

 Judge Strikes Down Unconstitutional Parts of Arkansas Law Targeting Librarians

In a blow to right-wing efforts to ban books and criminalize librarians, a federal judge on Monday struck down key provisions of an Arkansas law as unconstitutional—though the fight is far from over, with the Republican state attorney general planning to appeal.

Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed Act 372 in March 2023. A few months later, U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks temporarily blocked implementation of Sections 1 and 5 of the law—and on Monday, he ruled against them in a 37-page order.

Section 1 threatened Arkansas librarians and booksellers with up to a year in jail for providing minors with access to "harmful" materials. Brooks wrote that "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. For these reasons, Section 1 is unconstitutionally overbroad," added the judge, who also found the provision "unconstitutionally vague."

Section 5 created a process for challenging books in public libraries that critics called burdensome. Brooks found the provision unconstitutional because it is problematically vague and "unnecessarily imposes content-based restrictions on protected speech.

Those on the right constantly complain about shadow banning by social media companies which, if they knew understood the difference between public and private entities it might dawn on them that social media and its many iterations are owned by corporations and not the government. 

Yet, here they are trying to censor and or ban books at public libraries which if, you missed the public means just that. They have first amendment rights and protections.