Book banner Sarah Huckabee Sanders just learned the hard way why you should never piss off a librarian
opinion, Brooks sided with them, saying the new legislation was too broad since a “minor” is basically anyone under the age of 18, so the only way for libraries and bookstores to comply would be to keep all 0 to 17 year olds away from any potentially offensive books.“This would likely impose an unnecessary and unjustified burden on any older minor’s ability to access free library books appropriate to his or her age and reading level,” he wrote.Brooks added that the law could impact parents as well who, “browsing the shelves of bookstores and libraries with their minor children would be prohibited from accessing most reading material appropriate for an adult—because the children cannot be near the same material for fear of accessing it.”He surmised that the “breadth of this legislation and its restrictions on constitutionally protected speech are therefore unjustified” before calling the law “very poorly drafted.”“Perhaps any vagueness may be chalked up to the General Assembly’s haste to enact Act 372, but the lack of clarity seems to have been by design,” he wrote in the 49-page ruling. “After all, by keeping the pivotal terms vague, local governing bodies have greater flexibility to assess a given challenge however they please rather than how the Constitution dictates.”In response, the ACLU of Arkansas, which has been representing some of the plaintiffs, issued a statement celebrating the ruling.“The question we had to ask was – do Arkansans still legally have access to reading materials?” Holly Dickson, executive director of the ACLU in Arkansas, said.
