First Amendment

Trademark law is a shield to defend against consumer confusion—not a sword to attack speech protected by the First Amendment

Join the ACLU of Utah’s Banned Book Club by reading these 37 books facing bans and challenges in Utah schools.

When we win in court, attorney’s fees help the ACLU of Utah continue litigating cases like this to protect First Amendment rights.

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

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HB517 would have made it harder for guardians, students, educators, and authors to sue to protect their First Amendment rights, as it attempted to extend government immunity to state and local officials (including school districts), prohibit class actions, and allow school districts to require guardians to sign arbitration agreements.  

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 Utah’s Sensitive Materials Law, originally enacted in 2022 and amended in 2024, requires public schools and their libraries to remove a wide range of literature under unconstitutional, overbroad criteria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.