Volume 26, Issue 2
W is c onsin Ch ristian N e w s .c om
Pa g e 37
Judge Blocks School Board From Removing Explicit Books
By Tyler O’Neil, The Daily Signal May 2025 A school board in Colorado cannot remove sexually explicit, profane, and “transgender” books from school libraries because the school board is conservative, according to a federal judge touted as the first openly lesbian judge west of the Mississippi. The ACLU’s Colorado chapter filed a suit on behalf of two minors, the NAACP Wyoming State Area Con- ference, and the Authors Guild, claiming that the school district engaged in viewpoint discrimination when re- moving the books. The judge granted a preliminary in- junction in March, forcing the Elizabeth School District (in Elizabeth, a suburb southeast of Denver) to restore the books. Judge Charlotte Sweeney second-guessed the school district’s objections to the books’ contents, calling the objections “pretexual” and condemning the removals as partisan because school board members had discussed following their conservative convictions when debating the re- moval of the books. “Other than pretextual declarations, at this stage, there sim- ply is no reason to believe that the books were removed be- cause of vulgarity, age-inappropriateness, or for legitimate pedagogical [teaching] concerns; the board’s own emails strongly suggest that the book removal was motivated by the directors’ ‘commitment to conservative values,’” Sweeney
wrote. “The court questions what could be more partisan or political than removing books to further the board’s self-de- scribed conservative values.”
the district disagreed with the views expressed in the books and to further their preferred political orthodoxy.” “The court viewed any decision motivated by ‘conservative values’ as unacceptable and partisan,” Ellis explained. “The problem with the district court’s analysis is those ‘conservative values’ could be assigned to any book re- moval decision — a book that’s never been checked out, a book with ice cream stains on the cover, or a book that denies the Holocaust.” “This also begs a question: How could a ‘conservative’ school board ever remove problematic content without the board members’ conservatism disqualifying the de- cision?” Ellis asked. He condemned the ruling as “un- equal treatment because of one’s conservative values.” Dan Snowberger, the board’s chairman, told The Daily Signal that Sweeney abused her authority. “The fact that she is failing to acknowledge that the plaintiffs have mischaracterized the content of the books in question — despite our filings, including seg- ments of the books, and refuses to even hold a hearing to allow the parties to present facts — is rather interesting and doesn’t seem impartial,” he said. Left-leaning activist groups cheered Sweeney’s confirmation to the federal bench in 2022, celebrating her as “the first LGBT woman to serve as a federal district judge west of the Missis- sippi.” Continued on Page 38
Julian Ellis, the school district’s attorney, told The Daily Sig- nal that the district had asked Sweeney to hold an evidentiary hearing so she could review the books herself, yet the judge refused. The board had included segments from the books in its filings, aiming to demonstrate the vulgar and inappropriate material, but the judge dismissed those. Instead, the judge ruled that “the district’s decisive factor in voting to permanently banish the removed books was because
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