Colorado school district responds to lawsuit after removing certain books off library shelves

A battle over books has put the Elizabeth School District center stage of what it says has been false information about why it chose to remove 19 book titles from its school libraries.

"This is not about political views. This is not about ideology. This is about inappropriate content," said Dan Snowberger, superintendent of schools at the district.

It was last spring when the district first reviewed the material inside its school libraries.

"During that process, we were looking for content that was sensitive, and not to remove it, but we have parents who were concerned," Snowberger said.  "Instead of removing books that were sensitive, our board felt like we wanted to empower our parents."

Eventually, the board decided to bring 19 book titles before parents to decide if they wanted to keep those books on library shelves or remove them.

"Those 19 books were identified by the reviewers as probably being inappropriate in our schools," Snowberger said. "Many districts may just remove them. We felt like ... it was our community's decision to review and make that decision. So we put them on display for 25 days, [and] invited our parents to come in and say, 'What do you think? Should these books remain in our libraries? Should they be added to our sensitive topic list, or should they be removed?' And overwhelmingly our community felt they had no educational value, and they should be removed."

That was back in September 2024 when the district says the school board decided, following an overwhelming support from families, to remove those 19 titles:

1. "The Hate U Give" by Angie Thomas
2. "Beloved" by Toni Morrison
3. "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison
4. "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini  
5. "You Should See Me in a Crown" by Leah Johnson 
6. "#Pride: Championing LGBTQ Rights" by Rebecca Felix 
7. "George" (now published and referred to as "Melissa") by Alex Gino 
8. "It's Your World—If You Don't Like It, Change It" by Mikki Halpin
9. "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky 
10. "Thirteen Reasons Why" by Jay Asher 
11. "Looking for Alaska" by John Green 
12. "Nineteen Minutes" by Jodi Picoult 
13. "Crank" by Ellen Hopkins 
14. "Glass" by Ellen Hopkins 
15. "Fallout" by Ellen Hopkins
16. "Identical" by Ellen Hopkins 
17. "Burned" by Ellen Hopkins 
18. "Smoke" by Ellen Hopkins
19. "Redwood and Ponytail" by K.A. Holt.

Snowberger said, ultimately, some of those books were deemed inappropriate for certain ages levels.

"If anyone were to read the books, if anyone took the time to actually read some of the quotes, if I read them on air, you probably would be fined by the FCC," Snowberger said. "I can't even transmit the contents of these books through my child internet protection act filter."

However, months since this decision was made, The ACLU of Colorado filed a lawsuit against the district on behalf of two students, the NAACP and the Author's Guild, claiming the removal of these books violate a student's first amendment right to be able to access different information and ideas.

"Just because parents believe that the books shouldn't be put back on the shelves does not alleviate the school district from its requirements under the First Amendment to not ban books based on viewpoint and content discrimination," said Sarah Neel, an attorney for the ACLU of Colorado.

A district court judge's ruling siding with the ACLU last week would've ordered the school district to reinstate these books back on the school shelves. Yet, this week, Snowberger says they were granted a stay of the order this week pending their appeal of the decision.

"So they remain off our shelves. We await right now the judge's decision as to whether she will reissue that order after the plaintiffs respond to our motion," Snowbeger said.

"We believe that the district court judges opinion here was correct, and we will fight to uphold that at the 10th circuit," said Neel.

Snowberger says even if the district court does uphold their decision to have Elizabeth schools reinstate these books, it could take some time before they end up on shelves.

"These books have been disposed of," Snowberger said. "We destroyed them because, again, they were removed on Sept. 9, and the lawsuit was filed Dec. 20."

The district shared a handful of excerpts of these books with CBS News Colorado to showcase what they say is material its school district does not believe should be on its shelves. However, it does support a family's right to choose what their children read or even bring to school to read on their free time.

"It is not our job to change the values of our children," Snowberger said. "We want our children to come to school with whatever values they bring from home, and go home with those values. It doesn't matter if their families are left, right or center politically. We want children to have the values that their parents instilled. That's who we believe should instill values in children [and] not our public school district."

The plaintiffs in this case, those being represented by the ACLU, have until Friday to respond to the districts stay of order.

"At this point in time, the judge will wait for their response, make a decision, I imagine, early next week, and at that point, we will determine whether we need to continue with our appeal to the 10th circuit or whether that judge will actually hold a hearing and allow the district to present its case," Snowberger said.

Gabriela Vidal

Gabriela Vidal is a reporter for CBS News Colorado. Read her latest reports or check out her bio and send her an email.

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