How are Book Bans Constitutional?
How are Book Bans Constitutional?
I know Florida, Texas, and other counties have tried and succeeded to ban books, I wonder how that is even legal since we have the first amendment. I tried doing research on this since Huntington Beach is banning books and people were petitioning against that at the main library.
I made a little post asking people to petition on the Orange County sub.
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Bans often rely on the obscenity exception to the 1st Amendment:
https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment1/first-amendment-limits--obscenity.html
SCOTUS has never given a clear, well-defined, repeatable test to say exactly what "obscenity" even means, so local jurisdictions are free to push the envelope.
If that sounds like a pile of bullshit waiting to be exploited, yes, and that's exactly why we're seeing this happening.
Anybody push back? Saying lgbt and civil rights stuff is not "obscenity"?
You try arguing with idiots
You should instead be trying to get rid of the 'obscenity' exception itself, not just work around it.
It's not a 1A issue, though. The government isn't restricting your ability to purchase or own the book, they're just saying it can't be used in schools.
I wish there was no obscenity exception. I think all media deserves to exist regardless of its obscenity as long as it's not directly harming someone (like certain types of porn for instance)
The problem is the obscenity exception is also used for things like preventing someone from walking around a public park with a giant sign covered in gore porn. Something like that I think is obviously pretty okay to ban, but clearly it gets misused for a lot of homophobic/transphobic type stuff.
walking around a public park with a giant sign covered in gore porn
anti-abortion protesters have entered the chat
Just need to have a case for it being a political statement.