Two Iowa educators and an Iowa LGBTQ+ advocacy group filed a new request for a federal judge to block Iowa’s book ban and “don’t say gay” law on Monday.
The filing comes after a block on the law was lifted in August by the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The court sent the law back to the federal district court for further review.
The new request addresses a new U.S. Supreme Court decision in Moody v. NetChoice — the basis for an appellate court’s decision to lift the injunction on the law, which lawyers for the plaintiffs say the courts required.
Redefining the case, two new plaintiffs were added and two others who are no longer harmed by the law were removed. The new plaintiffs in the case are Dan Gutmann, a Des Moines Public School fourth-grade teacher, and Alyson Telford, a Des Moines Public School seventh-grade teacher.
Gutmann and Telford, along with Iowa Safe Schools, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group focused on helping LGBTQ+ students, are represented by Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ+ legal advocacy group, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa.
The new request seeks to block parts of the legislation, Senate File 496, that require school districts to remove books from classrooms and libraries that discuss or depict sex acts which has been interpreted by some schools to include LGBTQ+ topics.
The filing also seeks to block parts of the law that require schools to inform parents if their children seek gender-affirming measures at school, including going by a preferred name, and bans LGBTQ+ topics entirely from kindergarten through sixth-grade classrooms.
“Today’s filings mark the beginning of the next stage in this lawsuit,” Thomas Story, an attorney for the ACLU of Iowa, said in a news release Monday. “SF 496 continues to threaten the safety and rights of LGBTQ+ students and erode the trust between them and their teachers. Until it is blocked again, this law will suppress the efforts of Iowa Safe Schools and its partners in education to secure an inclusive environment for all of Iowa’s public school students.”
Gutmann, a plaintiff in the case, said because of the law, he can’t mention his husband for fear of violating the law, and this forced him to choose between his identity and his calling.
“Though this decision was later reversed, it revealed the harmful uncertainty this law creates for LGBTQ+ educators like me,” Gutmann said in a news release Monday. “We deserve the right to teach authentically, without fear of being silenced or erased.”