Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin has announced he is leading a 21-state coalition filing an amicus brief in support of Florida’s HB 1069, a law designed to prevent sexually graphic materials from being made available to young students in public-school libraries.
Griffin said the brief urges the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to overturn a district court ruling that blocked Florida from restricting books containing explicit sexual content in K–12 libraries.
“There is no First Amendment right to compel public-school libraries to stock their shelves with books containing graphic descriptions of sex acts that elementary students can access without their parents’ knowledge or consent,” Griffin said.
The federal district court concluded that Florida’s law violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. Griffin argues that the lower court’s interpretation is incorrect because the curation of public-school library materials constitutes government speech, which is not regulated by the First Amendment.
“The Eleventh Circuit should reverse the lower court and hold that curation decisions for public-school libraries are government speech,” Griffin said. “Doing so helps ensure that important decisions regarding the education of children and the contents of public-school libraries remain with the constitutionally appropriate decisionmakers: democratically accountable state and local officials.”
The brief was joined by attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.
