Overview
- The 59-page complaint was filed Jan. 6 in U.S. District Court in Utah on behalf of the Vonnegut estate, authors Elana K. Arnold, Ellen Hopkins and Amy Reed, and two anonymous high school students.
- Defendants include the Utah State Board of Education and its 15 members, Attorney General Derek Brown, and the Salt Lake City, Davis and Washington County school districts and their superintendents.
- The lawsuit challenges Utah’s 2024 statute enabling statewide bans once enough districts label a book “objective sensitive material,” asserting it is overbroad and violates the First Amendment.
- Plaintiffs argue the law ignores a work’s overall literary value and age-appropriateness and conflicts with the Supreme Court’s Miller obscenity test.
- The filing comes a day after three more titles were added to the statewide list, bringing it to 22, and it cites student harms including the removal of What Girls Are Made Of.