Cornell’s First Amendment Clinic filed a groundbreaking lawsuit in federal court in Idaho against the Idaho attorney general, county prosecutors, and others challenging the state’s law restricting public and school libraries from making constitutionally protected literary works available to minors. The Clinic is representing the Donnelly, Idaho Public Library District, public school librarian Christie Nichols, two parents, two students, the Big Five publishers, Sourcebooks, bestselling authors Malinda Lo, David Levithan, and Dashka Slater, and the Authors Guild. Under the law, classics like Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye have been stripped from bookshelves, alongside award-winning young adult best-sellers like Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give You the Sun and Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being A Wallflower.

The complaint against the bill known as HB 710 alleges that the law is vague, overbroad, and viewpoint discriminatory in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The Clinic argues that HB 710 targets works that are purportedly “harmful to minors” according to vague and overbroad definitions provided by the statute. HB 710 also fails to incorporate the Supreme Court’s holding in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), which defines “obscenity” in accordance with the First Amendment.

The complaint points to the law’s problematic definition of “minors,” which includes all individuals under the age of 18. According to the complaint, this broad grouping fails to recognize that certain works of literature that may be deemed inappropriate for the youngest of minors may be appropriate and of significant value to the oldest of minors.

The complaint also alleges that HB 710 expressly targets works that contain “any act of homosexuality,” including non-sexual acts like handholding and hugging between two characters of the same gender. According to the complaint, such a blatant restriction constitutes a violation of the First Amendment and the and Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

The complaint also targets a unique feature of HB 710 that permits both state law enforcement and private citizens to bring legal challenges against schools and libraries that fail to restrict minors’ access to materials deemed “harmful to minors.” Private citizens that file complaints against such schools or libraries receive a $250 award if they are successful in their challenge.

With numerous government officials and ordinary people deputized to enforce HB 710, public libraries and schools statewide have undertaken drastic self-censorship measures to protect themselves from liability. The threat of a possible lawsuit prompted one plaintiff, the Donnelly Library, to transition to adults-only. The Donnelly Library is a one-room library serving a small rural town; it is functionally unable to cordon off all books that could potentially be considered “harmful to minors” under the vague, overbroad definition provided by the state. Another plaintiff has been instructed by school district officials to remove nearly 40 books from her school’s library to preemptively avoid book challenges and lawsuits. In Eagle, Idaho, book challenges brought by a private citizen have likewise prompted the city’s public library to re-shelve twenty books and remove three from circulation, so they are unavailable to minors without signed parental permission.

While the ongoing harm of HB 710 is being felt by libraries and the communities they serve, authors and publishers who produce many of the books that have been or are at risk for restriction have also suffered, unable to bring their messages to their target audiences in Idaho.

According to Michael Grygiel, an adjunct professor with the Clinic, “HB 710 is an affront to the Constitution and is causing libraries and librarians to self-censor by removing classic works of literature from library shelves across Idaho to protect themselves from liability under the law's vague and overbroad provisions. This type of self-censorship is inimical to First Amendment liberties and has suffocated the rights of Idaho students to read age-appropriate books of their choosing. It is a privilege to represent the publishers, authors, libraries, parents, and students who have joined this lawsuit to challenge HB 710 and stand up for the First Amendment rights of all Idaho citizens.”

Already, major media outlets like the Wall Street Journal and the Guardian have covered the case, attesting to its significance and the growing threat of book censorship laws nationwide.

According to Grygiel, the plaintiffs will move to enjoin enforcement of the law and put an end to this effort by the state to silence voices they disapprove of in violation of the Constitution.

Clinic students Celina Rivernider ’26, Paul Janes ’26, Alex Strohl ’25, and Johanna Li ‘26 worked on the case. The case was supervised over the summer by former Stanton Fellow Christina Neitzey Hernsdorf and continues under the supervision of Stanton Fellow Daniela del Rosario Wertheimer and adjunct professor Michael Grygiel. Deborah Ferguson serves as local counsel for the matter.