Iowa can now enforce all parts of SF 496 — commonly known as the “don’t say gay” bill because of its provisions prohibiting references to LGBTQ topics in K-6 schools, requiring written parental permission to use a student’s preferred pronouns or name if it is does not match the gender listed in school records, and banning books with “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act” from schools — after a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday vacated two preliminary injunctions.
SF 496 was a wide-ranging education bill passed with only Republican support and signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds in May 2023. One section of the bill prohibits “any program, curriculum, test, survey, questionnaire, promotion or instruction” that references sexual orientation or gender identity in K-6 classes, and forbids teachers and other school personnel from using a student’s preferred name or pronouns without written permission from parents if they are “different than the name or pronoun assigned to the student in the school district’s registration forms or records.”
Opponents of the bill argued the last provision and its requirement for written permission would force schools to out transgender and nonbinary students to parents who may not accept the student’s identity, and interfere with students being able to trust teachers.
SF 496 also mandated public school districts remove all books with “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act” except for approved science or health class texts. During debate on the book-banning provision, Republican lawmakers focused on LGBTQ-themed books, calling them everything from inappropriate to pornographic, but finally settled on broader language about descriptions or depictions of sex acts. After it was pointed out that SF 496 could result in the Bible being removed from school libraries, Republicans added an exemption for the Bible and other religious texts.
In November 2023, the ACLU of Iowa and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of seven Iowa students and families, as well as Iowa Safe Schools, a nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ students, arguing that SF 496’s provisions preventing discussions of LGBTQ issues, requiring parental notification if a student asks to use a pronoun or name not already in school records and the book ban violated the constitutional rights of students.
Two days later, another federal lawsuit was filed, challenging SF 496’s book ban. The plaintiffs in this lawsuit were Iowa State Education Association (ISEA), the state’s largest teachers union, Penguin Random House, the country’s largest publishing house, and four authors whose books had been removed from schools seeking to comply with the book ban before Jan. 1, 2024, the date SF 496 was scheduled to go into effect.
U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher combined the two lawsuits, and three days before SF 496 was supposed to take effect, he issued a preliminary injunction stopping enforcement of the challenged provision.
In August 2024, a three-judge panel of the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the injunction and sent the case back to Locher, instructing him to use the criteria set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in its NetChoice v. Paxon decision. Locher could not have used that criteria, because the Supreme Court didn’t issue its decision until seven months after the SF 496 injunction was issued.
In March last year, Locher issued another preliminary injunction against SF 496’s book ban, finding the plaintiffs “have established, at minimum, several dozen unconstitutional applications of Senate File 496 involving books that have undeniable political, artistic, literary, and/or scientific value” and that the bill resulted in schools removing “non-fiction books about important historical events,” as well as books “designed to help young people avoid being victimized by sexual assault like Sexual Predators and The Truth About Rape; and non-fiction books about health and anatomy like Urinary Tract Infections.”
Two months later, Locher issued a second preliminary injunction blocking the other challenged provision of SF 496, finding that the students represented by the ACLU of Iowa and Lambda Legal, as well as those Iowa Safe Schools advocates for, would face “irreparable harm” if the challenged provisions were enforced.
In the pair of rulings on Monday vacating both preliminary injunctions, the three-judge panel found that neither group of plaintiffs was entitled to a preliminary injunction, because the judges decided that neither challenge to SF 496 is likely to succeed.
In the case of the lawsuit against the book ban brought by Penguin Random House and its co-plaintiffs, the judges cited a May 2025 decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Little v. Llano City. In that decision, the Fifth Circuit, the most rightwing of the country’s appeals courts, overturned existing precedent and found that banning books from a public library does not amount to a government action denying students and others access to those books, because of “the ready availability of the books elsewhere.” The Fifth Circuit concluded in the case from Texas that the First Amendment does not acknowledge a right to receive information. In December, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the decision, meaning it is now binding precedent on courts in the Fifth District, which covers Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
According to the Eighth Circuit panel, “The First Amendment does not guarantee students the right to access books of their choosing at taxpayer expense.” The judges cited a July 2025 Eighth Circuit decision in a case out of Arkansas, Walls v. Sanders, in which the judges held that “Students do not possess a supercharged right to receive information in public schools.”
The three judges concluded SF 496’s book ban served a legitimate purpose, writing, “Both the Supreme Court and this Court have held that schools have a legitimate pedagogical interest in prohibiting speech involving sexual content.”
The same three-judge panel also issued the ruling vacating the preliminary injunction in the case filed by the ACLU of Iowa and Lambda Legal challenging the other parts of SF 496. The judges ruled that Locher was incorrect in his determination that restrictions were likely unconstitutional because they were overly broad and vague.
Both cases now go back to the U.S. District Court for further litigation.
“This ruling is a setback, but it is not the end of this fight,” Nathan Maxwell, senior attorney at Lambda Legal, said in a written statement on Monday. “Iowa’s SF 496 is a cruel and unconstitutional law that silences LGBTQ+ children, erases their existence from classrooms, and forces educators to expose vulnerable students to potential harm at home. We will continue to use every legal tool available to protect these young people. They deserve nothing less.”
ISEA issued a statement saying it was disappointed in the appeals court decisions.
“Our schools should be safe spaces where students are free to learn, teachers can use their professional expertise without fear, and families can trust that education is based on open inquiry rather than government censorship,” ISEA President Joshua Brown said.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird issued a statement on Monday celebrating the lifting of the two injunctions.
“This is a huge win for Iowa parents,” according to Bird. “Parents should always know that school is a safe place for their children to learn, not be concerned they are being indoctrinated with inappropriate sexual materials and philosophies.”
The appeals court decision came on the same day the Trump administration announced it was terminating settlement agreements between the U.S. Department of Education and six school districts and a college aimed at protecting the civil rights of transgender and nonbinary students.
“Education Department officials said there was no precedent for the federal government terminating previously negotiated civil rights settlements with schools,” the New York Times reported. “Civil rights lawyers who worked under Democratic and Republican administrations said they were unaware of previous examples of such a move.”
“Today is yet another demonstration of the Trump administration’s commitment to uphold the law, protect our students and restore common sense,” Kimberly M. Richey, the assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education, said in a statement about the unprecedented rollback of civil rights protections.
