If you read the law it lets anyone claim to be offended by any media and that it doesn’t need to be declared obscene to be labeled obscene. Why is that? Because to a small group of very vocal haters just the existence of LGBTQ+ people is obscene. It offends their god so it offends them. But don’t try to claim the Bible is obscene or pushes offensive stuff it has special carve outs that make all the icky bad parts OK. I hope this will be appealed to the full appeals court as this attempt to errase an entire population of people based on bigotry must not be allowed to stand. I also just read where the education department under the hypermaga education secretary will not be enforcing or even recording the bullying and abuse of the LGBTQ+ kids at school. Her view is let the little fagots fend for themselves it seems. Remember she and her husband turned a blind eye to the many young boys being sexually assaulted by the wrestlers in their group.
Also the majority of the three judges panel said that the three patrons did not have standing to object because no books had been banned yet. They seem to have a wait and see if the victim is stabbed before taking the knife from the threatening person. That is stupid. Everyone knows what the law is intended to do and the writers of the law admit that openly. It seems the tRump appointed judges want to let attacks on the librarians and on the books that mention gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, and questioning kids / people be removed as soon as possible knowing it is harder to put them back than to ban them in the first place. Hugs.
The “social section” in Crawford County Library’s Van Buren branch (Screenshot from court documents)
A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Arkansas’ 2023 law restricting access to library materials can go into effect, three years after a judge blocked two sections of the law on First Amendment grounds.
The three-judge panel from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled that the 18 plaintiffs had no standing to challenge one section of Act 372 and failed to prove that the other section was unconstitutionally vague.
The two sections create criminal liability for librarians who distribute content that some consider “obscene” or “harmful to minors,” and give city and county governing bodies the final say over library content.
Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin praised the ruling, saying it “allows Arkansas to move forward in enforcing a law that protects children from obscene materials while increasing accountability for public-library curation decisions.”
The plaintiffs challenging the law include libraries, bookstores, advocacy groups and individual library patrons. Their lead attorney, John Adams, said in a statement that the legal team is “evaluating all available legal options, including further review by the courts,” after Thursday’s ruling.
“Libraries and bookstores should be places where people can freely explore ideas — not where booksellers and librarians face criminal liability for selling, checking out, or even just shelving constitutionally protected books,” Adams said. “The freedom to read is fundamental to a free society and has always been protected by the First Amendment.”
Griffin said Act 372 was meant to “to address legitimate concerns about minors’ access to obscene materials and to establish a process for reviewing challenged content.”
School and public libraries already had content challenge policies before Act 372. The law stalled in the Legislature in 2023 before it was amended to say library materials would be relocated to an area inaccessible to minors, not removed from the premises, if elected officials find them to be “obscene.”
Section 5 of Act 372 allows city and county governing bodies to relocate challenged material if a challenger disagrees with a library panel’s decision to keep it in its original section.
Another section of the law that gave school boards the same authority over school library materials had not been challenged.
Adams told the appeals court in June that Crawford County, a defendant in the case, showed what the law’s restrictions would look like in practice. The county’s five library branches separated LGBTQ+ children’s books from the rest of the collection after public outcry, and county officials cited Act 372 as a reason to maintain these “social sections,” even before the legislation became law.
Crawford County lost a separate federal lawsuit in 2024 after three parents alleged that the “social sections” violated the First Amendment.
The three library patrons who sued over the state law do not have standing because Section 5’s book challenge and relocation policies do not harm the plaintiffs, the appeals court panel said Thursday.
“Plaintiffs are speculating libraries might decide to segregate certain books as part of their curation policies, which they have not yet adopted, or in response to challenges, which have not yet been filed,” the panel wrote.
The librarian and bookstore plaintiffs have standing to challenge the other section of the law because they would be at risk of prosecution for noncompliance, according to the ruling, but the three judges disagreed with Adams’ claim that Section 1 of Act 372 was too vague.
This section makes “furnishing a harmful item to a minor” a Class A misdemeanor. Conviction would lead to a maximum prison sentence of one year.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks wrote that the law’s lack of a definition for terms like “furnishing” and “harmful” could lead to violations of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
An unchallenged provision of Act 372 removes schools and public libraries from the part of Arkansas state code that previously exempted them from prosecution for disseminating obscene content. Another unchallenged provision made school and public library employees liable for a Class D felony if they “knowingly” distribute obscene material or inform others of how to obtain it. A Class D felony conviction carries a maximum prison sentence of six years.
However, the language of Section 1 “limit[s] its application to situations when a person knowingly furnishes an item to a minor knowing of the item’s harmful character” and therefore is not too vague, the appeals court ruled.
Chief Judge Steven Colloton wrote in a concurring opinion Thursday that he understood the plaintiffs’ vagueness claim but disagreed with it “because third-party library patrons have no constitutional right to receive unfettered access to books of their choice at taxpayer expense.”
Colloton was appointed to the court in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush and has been chief judge since 2024. President Donald Trump appointed the panel’s other two judges, Ralph Erickson and L. Steven Grasz, in 2017.
Erickson was on the three-judge panel in April that allowed a 2023 Iowa law to go into effect, requiring the removal of books containing “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act” from Iowa public school libraries.
The removal of the injunction on Act 372 comes as the Arkansas Department of Education has been considering requiring public libraries to restrict children’s access to “sexually explicit materials” in order to receive state funding.
Dozens of Arkansans told the education department in June that they oppose requiring libraries to ensure patrons age 16 or younger cannot check out materials that depict or describe sexual contact and behavior.
The Arkansas State Library Board will meet Aug. 14 to consider sending the rules to a legislative panel for further approval. Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders appointed all six board members.
Author Info
Tess Vrbin
Tess Vrbin came to the Advocate from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, where she reported on low-income housing and tenants’ rights, and won awards for her coverage of 2021 flooding and tornado damage in rural Arkansas. She previously covered local government for The Commercial Dispatch in Mississippi and state government for the Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri.
Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
The House on Tuesday rejected an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would codify President Trump’s executive order preventing transgender individuals from serving in the military.
The lower chamber voted 212-217 to reject the amendment, sponsored by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.). Four Republicans sided with Democrats to kill the measure.
The executive order, implemented by Trump in January, states that “consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”
The order also states that the armed forces “shall neither allow males to use or share sleeping, changing, or bathing facilities designated for females, nor allow females to use or share sleeping, changing, or bathing facilities designated for males.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia voted 2-1 in June that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to expel people who are currently serving was motivated by animus against transgender people, violating their constitutional rights.
However, the court’s ruling did not cover people wishing to enlist in the military; the court ruled that it involved different considerations.
Republicans have spent years pushing policies targeting transgender Americans as a central part of their legislative agenda, arguing the measures are intended to protect women’s sports, parental rights and military readiness. Democrats have broadly opposed the efforts, arguing the measures discriminate against transgender people and infringe on their rights.
The NDAA is an annual, must-pass bill that establishes policies and authorizes appropriations for the Department of Defense’s military activities, military construction and the Department of Energy’s defense activities.
An update on my procedure to shave the spinal cord in my lower spine. The people at the surgical center were grand. I can’t describe them any other way. One nurse even joked with Ron and me that she would love to spend time with us off work hours because she loved our sexual innuendo banter with each other, stuff like we can’t even think straight after 36 years together and that we don’t say move straight forward we say move gayly forward. But work required her to only join us around the fringes but we had her laughing so hard. All of the staff were wornder and one even walked me to the bathroom when I felt I needed to pee. It was relatively embarrassing, but as I had worked in ICUs before I realized it was totally every day normal for the nurses to see my butt. She did hang the IVs and give me privacy which was more than we were able to do for the ICU patients.
When they took me into the procedure room, I was worried that I might not be out enough and would feel pain. The anesthesiologist asked me if I had ever had a colonoscopy. I repiled yes. He said do you remember it? No I replied. Same here he said, once we get you positioned, you won’t remember anything. They got me positioned, and then he told me that once they got me an arm rest for my right hand he would administer the aniestha. I was gone even before the arm rest was set up. Totally out. Woke up in the recovery room, and once I was awake they went and got Ron.
I have a list of do and don’ts. But on the way home we stopped to eat, I had a large breakfast for me. Then we got home, and I went to bed until 12:30. Got up, ate again, and locked the Majority Report into the fun half so I can watch it free, and went back to bed. Then I slept until nearly 5 PM. Got up and started working on the cartoon / meme / news post that was to go out today. I will go out tomorrow. Sorry about that, the spirit is willing, but the body is very weak right now. On the plus side the pain in my right leg I have been living with seems to have diminished greatly and in some cases gone away.
The video below is very funny and points out how tRump is now just a befuddled grandpa who thinks everything must be about him and how he is the greatest even when he is clueless about what he is talking about. The host points out the mistakes and money interests of the entire cabinet. Hope you enjoy. Hugs
I watched this on one of the sunday news shows. From the way he describes it the event was very scary and he was afraid. The settlers were damaging the vehicles. Pointing machine guns at the congressman. The IDF soldiers that were there said they agreed with the settlers and wouldn’t get involved. This is an official of the US government. Think of what would be the outcry from Israel if the situation had been reversed. I want all funds for the israeli military stopped until they apologize at the highest level for this and promise it won’t ever happen again. Hugs
Another person who has questions about the reporting and evaluating what was said in in those reports. Suris is trying very hard to be even handed and fair to all involved. He does point out some of the issues many people have with the entire affair. Again this is a serious accusation that is not only at this point. Again no one is under oath and some of the things reported have been found incorrect. Such as her telling her ex at the time it happened, but that is not true. Now she is not under any obligation to tell anyone. Every person who has been abused deals with it and opens up about it in their own time when they feel they can do so. Some never do. But if you are using the fact that you told someone and it turns out you did not, that is important information to know. I want to add two things. Suris is not a misogynist and is very openly pro-female and pro-LGBTQ+. He is really trying to just understand the facts and evaluate them without making a moral snap judgment or purity testing either party. But he has no advanced training in sexual abuse nor in court procedures of interrogation. He simply is listening and giving his best reasoning on it. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 