All but seven of the 56 books the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District removed from school libraries must be reshelved by next week, pending a trial next year, ruled U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason on Tuesday.

The banned books, including well-known titles like Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” and Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner,” were removed from schools last year without individual consideration of their content after parents and community members complained of “LGBTQ themes” or sexually explicit content in district meetings.

Gleason’s order said the district’s action violated students’ constitutional rights and “raises the specter of official suppression of ideas.” That caused irreparable harm, and would continue to do so if they stayed off library shelves until trial, her order found. The order is a preliminary injunction; the books’ ultimate fate will be determined in a trial scheduled for April of next year.

The district released a statement on Thursday that said the order is in line with work the school board has undertaken in the last year, which includes reviewing the books and returning some to library shelves. “The Court’s decision directs the District to report on what it has already done including the reshelving of books as directed by the Board,” the statement said, in part.

Savannah Fletcher, the attorney for the plaintiffs with the Northern Justice Project, said the court’s ruling shows that the Constitution doesn’t allow the government to remove books without a compelling reason for an indefinite period of time.

“The Constitution doesn’t allow the government to remove ideas simply because some people disagree with them,” she said.

“I think it’s a really great reminder during this time of tension around our schools, around students rights and parents rights and the protection of teachers and educators, that there is a baseline we all have to follow, and our Constitution is going to protect that. It really reaffirms the rights of students to access ideas, to access information.”

The case comes against the backdrop of a about which books and what kind of material should be available to students. Fletcher said the Alaska case is unique because the district removed such a large quantity of books without individual review.

“This has never been written about by a court before. It is kind of a novel spin on it,” Fletcher said, adding that the lack of precedent presented a challenge when briefing the court.

Meanwhile, some books have already been approved to go back to library shelves by the community. After the district removed them, it established a library committee, a majority of whose members were selected by the school board. The committee was tasked with determining whether the books were “criminally indecent” and it allowed more than a dozen books to return to schools, according to court filings. Another 14 titles were referred to the district for a final decision; others were not reviewed or found to be out of circulation or missing entirely. The court’s decision overrides these determinations, unless the school administration or board provides the court with a compelling reason to remove a specific title.

Scott Adams and his wife Dawn were plaintiffs in the case with their middle school-aged daughter, who he said is an avid reader and fan of the Harry Potter series.

He said he joined the lawsuit because the family felt the district’s action was a violation of the First Amendment and he was “ecstatic” with Tuesday’s order.

“I took an oath when I joined the military over 30 years ago. And the oath — to support and defend the Constitution — doesn’t end when you leave the military,” he said.

He said he wants to see a better process for deciding which books should be in the library, and said teachers and librarians should be trusted with those decisions.

The seven books that will remain off the shelves for indecency in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough school district are “Call Me by Your Name,” “Verity,” “It Ends with Us,” “Ugly Love,” “A Court of Mist and Fury,” “A Court of Silver Flames” and “You” Their removal will be reviewed with the others in the trial next year.

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This story was updated on May 28 at 5 p.m.

Patrick Keefe says he just wanted to teach Toni Morrison’s “Beloved.”

The high school English teacher has long included the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about slavery in his curriculum at Litchfield’s Campbell High School. And in the past, he had questioned students about whether Morrison’s themes about the legacy of slavery applied to the present.

But after a state law passed in 2021 that regulated how teachers may talk about race and other concepts to students, Keefe became more cautious, he testified in a deposition last year. Any student-led discussion about structural racism might lead to a complaint under the new law, and might cause Keefe to lose his teaching license, he feared.

On Tuesday, a federal judge cited Keefe and other teachers’ examples in an order striking down the law, siding with teachers unions and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire and ruling that the law is unconstitutionally vague.

In , Judge Paul Barbadoro held that the law, known by opponents as the “divisive concepts” or “banned concepts” law, violated teachers’ 14th Amendment rights because it is too vague for them to follow.

“The Amendments are viewpoint-based restrictions on speech that do not provide either fair warning to educators of what they prohibit or sufficient standards for law enforcement to prevent arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement,” Barbadoro wrote, referring to the statutory changes passed by the law.

The law prohibits K-12 public school staff from any instruction that advocates for four concepts: that a person of any race, gender, sexual orientation, or other characteristic is inherently “superior” to another; that any individual is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive against another for any characteristic; that an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment for any characteristic; and that people of one characteristic “cannot and should not attempt to treat others without regard to” one of their characteristics.

The characteristics covered by the law are a person’s “age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, creed, color, marital status, familial status, mental or physical disability, religion, or national origin.”

The law, which was in part modeled after an executive order by President Donald Trump that applied to federal employees and was repealed by President Joe Biden, was presented by Republican lawmakers as an anti-discrimination statute meant to ensure that all students were treated equally. It came as Republican lawmakers raised concerns about diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts implemented in public schools, and argued that teachers were espousing “critical race theory” in classrooms.

The law allowed parents to bring complaints to the state’s Commission for Human Rights against teachers and school staff who they believed violated the new anti-discrimination statute. And it gave the State Board of Education the power to revoke educators’ teaching licenses if they were found by the commission to be in violation.

But teachers unions and others raised concerns that the prohibited concepts were too unclear to follow and would result in educators self-censoring instruction around certain topics such as race or gender for fear of losing their teaching credentials.

In his order Tuesday, Barbadoro sided with the state’s two teachers unions – the National Education Association of New Hampshire (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers of New Hampshire (AFT) – who had argued that the law violated their 14th Amendment rights because it did not provide clear guidance of what teachers should or shouldn’t teach.

Barbadoro’s ruling grants “declaratory relief” to plaintiffs, meaning he is ruling that the law is unconstitutional, but it does not grant “injunctive relief” – a stricter ruling that would have stopped the state from carrying out the law. In his order, Barbadoro wrote that he didn’t believe he needed the latter relief because he believed the state would respect the ruling and stop enforcing the law.

The ruling was a setback for the state, which had argued that the Attorney General’s Office had given teachers sufficient guidance in a “Frequently Asked Questions” released in 2021 that outlined scenarios in which teachers would violate or not violate the law.

There are no known cases of New Hampshire teachers who have been found by the Commission for Human Rights to have violated the law.

But Barbadoro said there were a number of scenarios that the FAQs did not address. One such unanswered question centered on Keefe’s attempts to teach “Beloved.”&ČÔČúČő±è;

According to his deposition, Keefe had asked for clarity from his school’s administration but “was told there was none available other than the Attorney General’s Frequently Asked Questions,” Barbadoro noted.

Barbadoro also noted the example of Jennifer Given, a former high school social studies teacher at the Hollis Brookline High School who “felt the need to significantly modify her teaching methods ‘out of fear that [she] would be accused of’ violating the Amendments, regardless of whether she was actually doing so.”

And he argued that the uncertainty applied to extracurricular activities as well, citing the testimony of Ryan Richman, a high school history teacher at Timberlane Regional High School. Richman said as a faculty adviser for the school’s Model United Nations team, he felt the law hampered his ability to help students for their competition in fear of saying something that might be seen as a violation.

Barbadoro used the examples to bolster his larger conclusion.

“The Amendments are vague not because they subject teachers to severe professional sanctions, but because they fail to provide teachers with sufficient notice of what is prohibited and raise the specter of arbitrary and discretionary enforcement,” he ruled.

He also said that the vagueness would allow state officials to apply their own arbitrary interpretations to enforcement.

“
 Because the Amendments fail to establish ‘minimal guidelines to govern [their] enforcement,’ officials are free to ‘pursue their personal predilections’ when applying the law,” Barbadoro wrote.

The decision was hailed by the plaintiffs; Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire, called it “a victory for academic freedom and an inclusive education for all New Hampshire students.”

“New Hampshire’s ‘banned concepts’ law stifled New Hampshire teachers’ efforts to provide a true and honest education,” agreed NEA-NH President Megan Tuttle in a statement. “Students, families, and educators should rejoice over this court ruling which restores the teaching of truth and the right to learn for all Granite State students.”

And it was cheered on by Democrats, including the two lead Democratic candidates for governor. Former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig praised the plaintiffs who “fought this unconstitutional law.” In her own statement, Executive Councilor Cinde Warmington said, “Teachers should be free to teach – the truth – and students should be free to learn.”

Republicans said they would redouble efforts to pass the bill. In a statement, former state Senate President Chuck Morse, a Republican candidate for governor who had helped push for the law in the Senate, said he was “deeply disappointed” in the decision but vowed to press on.

“As Governor, I will work tirelessly with lawmakers, educators, and community leaders to draft and pass a stronger bill that addresses the court’s concerns while keeping our fundamental goal intact: to prevent the dissemination of any materials that promote racial superiority or inferiority,” Morse said.

In a post on X, State Rep. Keith Ammon, a New Boston Republican, wrote: “Judge Barbadoro just put stopping Critical Race Theory back on the ballot in November.”

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Monday’s vote sends the bill, which , to Gov. Glenn Youngkin for a signature. Youngkin listed the legislation as part of his “day one game plan” and has made parental input into public curriculum a central part of his political platform. One of his campaign ads featured a Fairfax County mother who to remove Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Beloved” from her son’s high school Advanced Placement English course.

The language of the bill, sponsored by Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, R-Henrico, is to legislation that passed the General Assembly with bipartisan support in 2016. If signed into law, it would require the Virginia Department of Education to draft model policies on notifying parents of any sexually explicit materials assigned in class.

Parents would also be permitted to review the material and request alternative assignments. Every local school district would be required to adopt a policy consistent or more comprehensive with the statewide model. 

Once a bipartisan issue in Virginia, the push to give parents greater control over potentially controversial curriculum has become politically contentious since the gubernatorial race between Youngkin and former Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Youngkin criticized McAuliffe for vetoing the 2016 bill on the campaign trail while pledging to ban other “divisive concepts,” including critical race theory, from public schools.

The idea of banning books has also sparked fierce local debate, both in Virginia and nationwide. Multiple school districts, including and , temporarily removed multiple texts from school library shelves after parents complained about explicit scenes. attracted national attention after banning the graphic novel “Maus” — a visual retelling of the Holocaust from the perspective of the author’s father — from being taught in classrooms.

Dunnavant’s legislation wouldn’t apply to library books, but Democrats have argued the bill amounts to classroom censorship.

“The consequences of this bill are clear,” said Del. Alfonso Lopez, D-Arlington, before Monday’s vote. “Teachers who are already overworked are not going to create two lesson plans. So what they’re not going to do is, they’re not going to teach the most controversial or dynamic or insightful ideas.”&ČÔČúČő±è;

The bill’s definition of “sexually explicit” comes from a that limits what content state employees can access on government-provided computers. Republicans have consistently argued the legislation gives parents a reasonable level of control over what their children are exposed to in school.

“To steal Del. Kilgore’s phrase, let’s all calm down for a minute,” Del. Carrie Coyner, R-Chesterfield, responded.

“It’s not an overly broad definition,” she added. “It’s something we don’t let adults in the Commonwealth access if they’re state employees.”

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As analysts dissect the data from a political race they may try to lump all parental choice supporters into the same messaging box. To be clear, we are not one monolithic voting bloc who disagrees with a fair accounting of our country’s history being taught to our children. We do want our children to learn about slavery and the ongoing effects of racism.

There are people out here who believe the school environment that is best for their child is one in which Toni Morrison novels are not part of the curriculum. And that’s fine. They can have their choice, just like we can have ours. However, my plea to my friends in the education reform movement is do not allow a highly respected, well-regarded, and, in many ways, revered author in the Black community to be demonized as a political hot potato.

I implore those of us in the parent choice community to make it abundantly clear that we stand for parents having the right to choose and educators having the power to create curriculums that tell the truth in ways that will empower our children to be braver than we were, poised and prepared to take on the future because they have learned about their ancestors’ past.

This year’s political campaigns would have you believe that parent choice advocates side with one political party over the other, simply because our interests converge over public charter schools. That is simply not true. Let’s not let politicians twist our advocacy to best fit their needs.

As a Black parent and leader of the Freedom Coalition for Charter Schools, it is very clear to me that education choice is a winning political platform and sound policy. Our coalition is an organization that currently has 250 organizational members across 21 states that collectively serve more than 1 million Black and Brown families. We believe in parents having the freedom to choose the best schools for their children, regardless of their income or zip code. We fight for these liberatory freedoms every day. 

We cannot allow parent choice to be muddied by the voices out there arguing against CRT, especially considering they are at best unaware that it is an academic theory that is being discussed in graduate schools and at worst, using this as a proxy argument against children learning about the honest history of our country.

I am one who believes that children will be better citizens if they learn both the dark and beautiful facts that make America the promising country that it is.

RaShaun Kemp is the executive director of the Freedom Coalition for Charter Schools, which promotes public charter schools and chartering to advance and protect the right of self-determination for Black and brown people.