Student & Youth Rights

HB315 promotes “Baby Olivia,” a medically inaccurate, computer-generated fetus video produced by extremists pushing abortion bans.

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

The ACLU of Utah Students’ Resource Center—your go-to hub for clear, reliable information about your rights, empowering you to stand up, speak out, and stay informed.

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 Utah’s Sensitive Materials Law, originally enacted in 2022 and amended in 2024, requires public schools and their libraries to remove a wide range of literature under unconstitutional, overbroad criteria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

HB197 sought to expand on the prior sensitive materials law, HB29, passed in 2024. This bill would have required schools to use automated filters in screening databases and other online content and to immediately ban access to materials upon a “plausible” complaint.