There is no question the 2006 novel Sold deals with painful and disturbing truths, shedding light on the brutal reality of sexual slavery in India.

But is the content so sexually explicit that it no longer belongs in a library’s teen section?

In Alabama, where conservative policies dominate, the answer appears to be yes. State officials argue that Sold crosses a legal line, citing new rules that restrict access to materials considered sexually explicit, regardless of educational value.

At the center of this and other book fights in the state is a constitutional question: How should “sexually explicit” be interpreted under the First Amendment?

Free speech advocates say the state is getting it wrong. Read Freely Alabama, the anti-book censorship group, argues that the book is not only appropriate for teen readers, but essential. They also say that criticism about the book is through the lens of conservative activism, and that courts have already ruled against that.

In Fairhope on Monday, the city’s library ruled that the book was appropriate for teen readers and opted not to reshelve it to the adult section. Library officials said there was nothing “obscene” about the book.

“They call people who oppose these books as ‘pedos’ or ‘groomers,’ but books like these not only inform and inspire empathy, they make young people harder for would-be predators to groom,” said Elizabeth Williams, a spokesperson for the anti-censorship group in Baldwin County.

State officials, meanwhile, insist Alabama’s code is clear. Amy Minton of the Alabama State Public Library Board says most residents support the new standards, which move certain books to the adult section. Parents are then given the authority to determine if their child should have permission to access the content.

“There is no gray area in there,” she said. “It’s very clear. But because it has one picture of anatomy, it’s the anatomy. There is no exception for education and instruction for the code in there.”

Both sides claim “common sense” backs their position. One argues the First Amendment protects the book and its placement within public libraries. The other says state-defined standards must prevail.

But at its core, the battle appears to be over who gets to define what counts as “sexually explicit” in the eyes of the Constitution.

“There is no universally agreed upon definition of ‘sexually explicit,” said Paul Horwitz, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law. “It is not the same thing as obscenity, and sexually explicit material is not subject to the same level of potential restriction as obscene materials. But laws aimed specifically at restricting the access of minors to sexually explicit materials are subject to a lower degree of justification.”

Supreme Court precedent

Most free speech experts say the federal courts have long ago sided with those pushing back against book censors. But they also recognize it’s been a long time – 43 years – since the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on book censorship at libraries. And in that 1982 case, Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico, the court lacked clarity leading to varying interpretations about book censorship inside libraries.

“That was a highly fractured opinion and was no majority opinion and I think the U.S. Supreme Court will have to decide it again,” said David Hudson, a First Amendment fellow at the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington, D.C. “There are a lot of challenges going on right now and it’s a hot button, cultural issue. I do expect one of these cases to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The 1982 case focused on a school library dispute of banned titles originating from a list compiled by a conservative organization that deemed them objectionable.

Similar battles have taken place in recent years in Alabama, and elsewhere. Leading those disputes are conservative activist groups like Moms for Liberty and Clean Up Alabama, who are pushing local library officials to have a host of controversial titles or subjects relocated from children and teen to adult sections.

The group has also gotten the attention of the APLS, and its board chairman John Wahl – who is also the chairman of the Alabama Republican Party. But Wahl says the concerns about library content in children and teen sections is more widespread than only among activist groups, though groups like Read Freely say the complaints are almost solely coming from conservative activists.

The 1982 case argued that removing the books infringed upon First Amendment rights to access of ideas and information freely. The high court divided in its ruling, though five of the justices ruled in favor of the students. But even among the justices who supported the students, there were different interpretations over the First Amendment’s guidance on library content.

The ruling has given local government officials broad discretion over library books.

“The Supreme Court’s case law with respect to the First Amendment and libraries is sparse and its most relevant case was highly fractured,” said Horwitz, referring to the 1982 ruling.

Recent rulings

More recently, federal courts have ruled against policies aimed at relocating books. That issue is at the heart of an ongoing dispute in Fairhope, where library board members on Monday refused to relocate Sold and the 2020 novel, Grown, which is about sexual exploitation.

“As a general policy, the notion you should move more mature themes where 8-year-olds are not likely to stumble across them is perfectly reasonable,” said Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tenn. “The challenge the libraries face is that too many critical of specific books tend to paint with a very broad brush. That’s not what the First Amendment calls for.”

Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy with the non-profit civil liberties group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), said two lower court federal rulings – one in Arkansas and another in Iowa – blocked state laws that aimed to relocate LGBTQ-themed books from children’s sections or required schools to remove books from libraries that contained descriptions of a sex act.

Terr said the Iowa case has led to banning books without any evaluation of materials for its overall literary or educational value. The Iowa case led to a federal district judge twice striking down a 2023 state law banning books with sexual content in K-12 public schools.

Terr said the law led to school districts removing classic works like Slaughterhouse Five and The Color Purple.

“The court says the law ‘imposes a puritanical pall of orthodoxy’ over school libraries by concluding there is no redeeming value to any book that contains a ‘description’ of a ‘sex act,’ even if the book is a work of history, self-help guide, award-winning novel or other piece of serious literature,” Terr said.

He anticipates Iowa state officials appealing the ruling.

In the Arkansas case of Virden v. Crawford County, a federal court determined that the public library system violated the First Amendment by adopting a policy requiring branches to remove LGBTQ-themed books from children’s sections, label them, and place them in a separate “social section.”

The judge, who ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in 2024, said the decision was a “textbook example” of viewpoint discrimination. The county has since been ordered to pay $113,000 in legal fees for the plaintiffs.

“The biggest constitutional red flag is removing or burdening access to books in order to suppress disfavored views,” Terr said. “Broad, top-down, content-based restrictions can violate the First Amendment even if they aren’t explicitly targeted at a particular viewpoint or ideology.”

Political fight

Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for education studies at the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. – a conservative think tank that promotes family values – said that in her opinion, there is a lot of content in teen sections of libraries that lacks educational quality and “can hardly be considered literature.”

“In my opinion, it’s gone unexamined by parents in America because they trust publishers and authors writing young adult material to children,” she said, adding she doesn’t believe “any material produced by exploiting other people is legitimate speech.”

She, too, believes there will be court intervention even if concerned parents and activists are not waiting around for the U.S. Supreme Court to act.

Politics also has a say in how the issues are handled. In Virginia in 2021, during the leadup to the governor’s race, the issue of sexually explicit materials in schools emerged as an issue that benefitted Republican Glen Youngkin, Kilgannon said. He defeated Democratic incumbent Gov. Terry McAuliffe in that year’s race.

“It’s not going to stop,” said Hudson at the Freedom Forum. “It’s too politically popular. We need some clarity from the Supreme Court. We haven’t had a pure book case since 1982. That’ a long time and certainly a lot has happened.”