First Amendment

Public Urged to Help Defeat New Law that Would Further Censor Books in Schools

The two-hour event will feature a community reading hour followed by remarks from authors and other speakers, including Representative John Arthur and author Abdi Nazemian, whose novel Like a Love Story was banned statewide in Utah in 2025.

Plaintiff Added to Suit After Two School Districts Ban Dr. Angelou’s Pulitzer Prize-Nominated Work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings — Statewide Ban Under Consideration

ACLU of Massachusetts featured our case, Vonnegut v. Utah, on their podcast Civil Liberities Minute. Listen now.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Utah Foundation, Inc. (ACLU of Utah), alongside law firms Parr Brown Gee & Loveless and Spencer Fane, LLC, filed a lawsuit in United States District Court for the District of Utah on behalf of the Estate of Kurt Vonnegut, award-winning authors Elana K. Arnold, Ellen Hopkins, and Amy Reed, and two anonymous Utah public high school students. By disregarding the literary value of age-appropriate books and removing them, Utah is trampling on the protections guaranteed by the First Amendment. Utah’s Sensitive Materials Law, originally enacted in 2022 and amended in 2024, requires public schools and their libraries to remove a wide range of literature under unconstitutional, overbroad criteria imposed by the state legislature. Among the books removed are major award-winning and best-selling works, including Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, a National Book Award winner and one of Time Magazine’s “100 Best English-Language Novels,” and Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Many of the banned titles target voices that have historically been silenced, authors of color, women, and LGBTQ+ writers. These removals include Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner; Elana K. Arnold’s What Girls Are Made Of, a National Book Award finalist; and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a Pulitzer Prize nominee whose author received both the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

On May 18, 2024, a police officer approached Maryon and said her name while she participated in a peaceful pro-Palestine protest. In January 2025, charges were brought against her—including walking in the road and disorderly conduct—which were both inflammatory and legally unsound.  

ACLU of Utah, ACLU national, and law firm Jenner and Block are representing Southern Utah Drag Stars File Lawsuit Challenging the City of St. George’s Censorship of Drag Performances