The Iowa law prohibiting school libraries from having books containing sexually explicit material can go into effect, federal appeals court judges ruled Friday.

The three-person panel moved to lift the injunction blocking the law from enforcement Friday. Portions of the were previously blocked in January by U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that Locher’s decision was based on a “flawed analysis of the law.”

The law prohibits school libraries from including books with written and visual depictions of sex acts from, in addition to banning instruction and materials involving issues of “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” for students in kindergarten through sixth grade. These regulations will now be allowed to take effect as legal challenges continue.

The law is being challenged by multiple parties, including the, Iowa Safe Schools, as well as the publisher Penguin Random House and due to the law.

Iowa State Education Association President Joshua Brown said in a statement that the organization was “disappointed” by the appeals court decision.

“Banning essential books in our schools is a burden for our educators, who will face punishment for not guessing which book fits into a supposed offensive category, and for our students, who are deprived of reading from great authors with valuable stories,” Brown said in a statement. “If Iowa’s elected leaders truly valued education professionals, they would leave important classroom decisions to the local school districts and the experts who work in them – not make what we teach our students a game of political football.”

Critics of the measure say that the law will keep classic literature — like the books “Brave New World” and “Ulysses” — from being available in school libraries, but that a majority of the books removed from school shelves are those focused on stories about race and LGBTQ+ issues, like “Gender Queer,” “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” and “The Color Purple.”

Educators have criticized the state for not clarifying the rules surrounding the law, as the Iowa Department of Education to provide more information on what materials are considered “age-appropriate” under the law. The state department has said they plan to address allegations of noncompliance on a case-by-case basis.

But Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said the appeals court decision was a win for Iowa parents.

Gov. Kim Reynolds also released a statement supporting the court opinion.

“Today, the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit confirmed what we already knew – it should be parents who decide when and if sexually-explicit books are appropriate for their children,” Reynolds said. “Here in Iowa, we will continue to focus on excellence in education and partnerships with parents and educators.”

The lawsuit found that the district court decision did not properly evaluate the law under existing precedent — referring specially to the 2024 U.S. Supreme Court decision in , a lawsuit involving speech on social media platforms. However, the judges also rejected the state’s argument that school library materials constitute “government speech.” They also found that a transgender student whose school district banned gender-sexuality alliance clubs due to concerns about the law has standing to sue.

The ACLU of Iowa, alongside Lambda Legal and the Jenner & Block law firm, plaintiffs in the lawsuit, issued a join statement saying that Iowa families and LGBTQ+ students were “deeply frustrated and disappointed” by the court’s decision, especially as the 2024-2025 school year approaches.

“Denying LGBTQ+ youth the chance to see themselves represented in classrooms and books sends a harmful message of shame and stigma that should not exist in schools,” the legal organizations said in the statement. “We are, however, encouraged by the Eighth Circuit’s complete rejection of the State’s most dangerous arguments, and we look forward to renewing our request for relief from this law’s damaging and unconstitutional effects on LGBTQ+ students. … We will ask the district court to block the law again at the earliest opportunity.”

The decision returns the case to district court for further action.

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If you went to high school in the United States anytime since the 1960s, you were likely assigned some of the following books: Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” “Julius Caesar” and “Macbeth”; John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”; Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”; and William Golding’s “The Lord of the Flies.”

For many former students, these books and other so-called “classics” represent high school English. But despite the efforts of reformers, both and , the most frequently assigned titles have never represented America’s diverse student body.

Why did these books become classics in the U.S.? How have they withstood challenges to their status? And will they continue to dominate high school reading lists? Or will they be replaced by a different set of books that will become classics for students in the 21st century?

The high school canon

The set of books that is taught again and again, broadly across the country, is referred to by literature scholars and English teachers as “the canon.”

The high school canon has been shaped by many factors. Shakespeare’s plays, especially “Macbeth” and “Julius Caesar,” have been taught consistently , when the curriculum was determined by college entrance requirements. Others, like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” winner of the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, were ushered into the classroom by current events – in the case of Lee’s book, . Some books just seem especially suited for classroom teaching: “Of Mice and Men” has a straightforward plot, easily identifiable themes and is under 100 pages long.

Titles become “traditional” when they are passed down through generations. As the education historian Jonna Perrillo observes, of having their children study the same books that they once did.

The last period of significant change to the canon was during the 1960s and 1970s, when the largest generation of the 20th century, the baby boomers, went to high school. For instance, in 1963, at Evanston Township High School in Illinois revealed that “To Kill a Mockingbird,” first published in 1960, was by far the “most enjoyed book,” followed by two books that had been published in the 1950s, J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” and Golding’s “The Lord of the Flies.” None of these books were yet traditional, yet they became so for the next generation.

A comparison of national surveys conducted in 1963 and 1988 shows how several books that were introduced to the classroom when the boomers were students had become classics when boomers were teachers.

During the 1960s and 1970s, teachers even reframed “Romeo and Juliet” as a contemporary work. Lesson plans from the era referred to its adaptations into “” – a musical that – and Franco Zefferelli’s of Shakespeare’s story of star-crossed lovers. It became the perfect hook for ninth graders in a study of Shakespeare that would conclude in 12th grade with “Macbeth.”

Efforts to diversify

English education professor that, since the 1960s, “leaders in the profession of English teaching have tried to broaden the curriculum to include more selections by women and minority authors.” But in the late 1980s, according to his findings, the high school “top ten” still included only one book by a woman – Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” – and none by minority authors.

At that time, a was underway about whether America was a “melting pot” in which many cultures became one, or a colorful “mosaic” in which many cultures coexisted. Proponents of the latter view argued for a multicultural canon, but they were ultimately unable to establish one. A 2011 survey of Southern schools by Joyce Stallworth and Louel C. Gibbons, published in “English Leadership Quarterly,” found that the five most frequently taught books were all traditional selections: “The Great Gatsby,” “Romeo and Juliet,” Homer’s “The Odyssey,” Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

One explanation for this persistence is that the canon is not simply a list: It takes form as stacks of copies on shelves in the storage area known as the “book room.” Changes to the inventory require time, money and effort. Depending on the district, replacing a classic . And it would create more work for teachers who are already maxed out.

“Too many teachers, probably myself included, teach from the traditional canon,” a teacher told Stallworth and Gibbons. “We are overworked and underpaid and struggle to find the time to develop quality lessons for new books.”

The end of an era?

Esau McCauley, the author of “Reading While Black,” describes the list of classics by white authors as the “.” At least two factors suggest that its dominance over the curriculum is coming to an end.

First, the battles over which books should be taught have become more intense than ever. On the one hand, progressives like the teachers of the growing call for the inclusion of books by – and they question the status of the classics. On the other hand, conservatives have challenged or successfully banned the teaching of many new books that deal with gender and sexuality or race.

PEN America, a nonprofit organization that fights for free expression for writers, reports “” in book bans. The outcome might be a literature curriculum that more resembles the political divisions in this country. Much more than in the past, students in conservative and progressive districts might read very different books.

Second, English Language Arts education itself is changing. State standards, such as those , no longer make the teaching of literature the primary focus of English class. Instead, there is a new emphasis on “.” And while preceding generations of teachers voiced concerns about the distractions of and then , books may have an even smaller share of students’ attention in .

“We no longer live in a print-dominant, text-only world,” the National Council of Teachers of English proclaims in . The group calls for English teachers to put less emphasis on books in order to train students to use and analyze a variety of media. Accordingly, students across the country may not only have fewer books in common, but they also may be reading fewer books altogether.

Why teach literature?

Over generations, English teachers have voiced many reasons to teach books, and the canon in particular: to instill a , foster , build and cultivate . These goals have little to do with the skills emphasized by contemporary academic standards. But if literature is going to continue to be an important part of American education, it is important to talk not only about what books to teach, but the reasons why.

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