{"id":78867,"date":"2024-01-03T08:11:12","date_gmt":"2024-01-03T13:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=78867"},"modified":"2024-01-03T08:11:12","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T13:11:12","slug":"citing-risk-to-elie-wiesels-night-iowa-judge-blocks-key-parts-of-state-book-ban-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/citing-risk-to-elie-wiesels-night-iowa-judge-blocks-key-parts-of-state-book-ban-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Citing risk to Elie Wiesel\u2019s \u2018Night,\u2019 Iowa judge blocks key parts of state book ban law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By ANDREW LAPIN<\/p>\n<p>(JTA) \u2013 A federal judge in Iowa has blocked much of a state law forbidding school libraries from stocking books depicting \u201csex acts,\u201d in part because he said it was keeping a classic Holocaust memoir off shelves.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_78868\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/1-2-24-wiesel-1-scaled.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-78868\" class=\"wp-image-78868 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/1-2-24-wiesel-1-300x202.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"202\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/1-2-24-wiesel-1-300x202.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/1-2-24-wiesel-1-1024x689.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/1-2-24-wiesel-1-768x517.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/1-2-24-wiesel-1-1536x1033.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/1-2-24-wiesel-1-2048x1378.jpg 2048w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/202;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-78868\" class=\"wp-image-78868 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/1-2-24-wiesel-1-300x202.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"202\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/1-2-24-wiesel-1-300x202.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/1-2-24-wiesel-1-1024x689.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/1-2-24-wiesel-1-768x517.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/1-2-24-wiesel-1-1536x1033.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/1-2-24-wiesel-1-2048x1378.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-78868\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Political activist and writer Elie Wiesel on November 3, 1980 in New York, New York. (Santi Visalli\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher granted a preliminary injunction against the law, Iowa Senate File 496, on Friday, just before a Jan. 1 deadline for schools to begin enforcing it. The \u201cstaggeringly broad\u201d law, he wrote in his opinion, would prevent public schools from stocking \u201cnon-fiction history books about the Holocaust.\u201d He pointed specifically to Elie Wiesel\u2019s \u201cNight\u201d as an example of a book that could be caught in the dragnet.<\/p>\n<p>Lochner had previously brought up \u201cNight\u201d during oral arguments about the Iowa law. At a Dec. 22 hearing, he grilled a state attorney about which kinds of books the state had the authority to pull from schools. Asked if Wiesel\u2019s memoir could be pulled along with World War II history title \u201cThe Rape of Nanking,\u201d the attorney responded that it could, the Des Moines Register reported at the time.<\/p>\n<p>At that hearing, Locher called the law \u201cone of the most bizarre laws I\u2019ve ever read in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The injunction is temporary while Lochner considers the law and challenges against it more fully. Still, it represents a major blow to efforts by conservative legislators in Iowa to import a national effort to purge school libraries of books they consider inappropriate. The effort has focused on books about race and sexuality but has also led to books dealing with Judaism and the Holocaust being challenged or removed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNight\u201d previously entered the book-ban debate when a Pennsylvania district forced a librarian to take down a poster featuring a Wiesel quote.<\/p>\n<p>In Iowa, months-old local reports and Locher\u2019s opinion indicated that \u201cNight\u201d was at one time removed from at least one Iowa public school district, although a regularly updated database of pulled books maintained by the Des Moines Register no longer lists the title.<\/p>\n<p>Other Jewish books have also been affected by the law. \u201cMaus,\u201d Art Spiegelman\u2019s graphic Holocaust memoir, was on the chopping block in at least one district along with Judy Blume\u2019s \u201cAre You There, God? It\u2019s Me, Margaret,\u201d before the school reversed course and put them back on shelves. According to the Des Moines Register, \u201cMaus\u201d remains banned at another Iowa district: Alta-Aurelia, in a rural northwest region of the state.<\/p>\n<p>Iowa\u2019s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, signed SF 496 into law last year along with other culture-war legislation targeting transgender athletes and student pronouns in schools.<\/p>\n<p>Locher\u2019s ruling said that most parts of the law, including the provisions requiring schools to ban all books depicting a \u201csex act\u201d and prohibiting instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation through the sixth grade, could not go into effect.<\/p>\n<p>Two separate lawsuits challenging the law\u2019s constitutionality will remain active in the meantime: One of them was brought by Penguin Random House and four bestselling authors, including Jodi Picoult, while the other was brought by LGBTQ students.<\/p>\n<p>Challenges to similar laws are also winding through courts in Texas and Florida.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Citing%20risk%20to%20Elie%20Wiesel%E2%80%99s%20%E2%80%98Night%2C%E2%80%99%20Iowa%20judge%20blocks%20key%20parts%20of%20state%20book%20ban%20law\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":78868,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7135,25],"tags":[144,8790,8795,8788],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78867"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78867"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78869,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78867\/revisions\/78869"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}