Book banner Sarah Huckabee Sanders just learned the hard way why you should never piss off a librarian

Librarians 1, Sarah Huckabee Sanders 0.

The gay-hating governor of Arkansas just had a draconian law she signed earlier this year smacked down by a federal judge.

Sanders signed Arkansas Act 372 back in March. It threatens up to a year in prison for any librarian or bookseller caught supplying kids with “harmful” (read: LGBTQ+) books and was set to go into effect on August 1.

That is until Saturday, when U.S. district judge Timothy L. Brooks issued a preliminary injunction stopping it in its tracks.

Earlier this summer, a group of librarians, booksellers, and other book nerds challenged the law, accusing it of violating the state’s 1st and 14th amendments and saying libraries and bookstores would be forced to stop carrying certain titles for fear of prosecution.

In his opinion, Brooks sided with them, saying the new legislation was too broad since a “minor” is basically anyone under the age of 18, so the only way for libraries and bookstores to comply would be to keep all 0 to 17 year olds away from any potentially offensive books.

“This would likely impose an unnecessary and unjustified burden on any older minor’s ability to access free library books appropriate to his or her age and reading level,” he wrote.

Brooks added that the law could impact parents as well who, “browsing the shelves of bookstores and libraries with their minor children would be prohibited from accessing most reading material appropriate for an adult—because the children cannot be near the same material for fear of accessing it.”

He surmised that the “breadth of this legislation and its restrictions on constitutionally protected speech are therefore unjustified” before calling the law “very poorly drafted.”

“Perhaps any vagueness may be chalked up to the General Assembly’s haste to enact Act 372, but the lack of clarity seems to have been by design,” he wrote in the 49-page ruling. “After all, by keeping the pivotal terms vague, local governing bodies have greater flexibility to assess a given challenge however they please rather than how the Constitution dictates.”

In response, the ACLU of Arkansas, which has been representing some of the plaintiffs, issued a statement celebrating the ruling.

“The question we had to ask was – do Arkansans still legally have access to reading materials?” Holly Dickson, executive director of the ACLU in Arkansas, said. “Luckily, the judicial system has once again defended our highly valued liberties.”

Meanwhile, Arkansas’s attorney general, Tim Griffin, a Republican, vowed that his office will “continue to vigorously defend the law.”

As for Sanders, she hasn’t commented on her recent court loss.

Throughout all this, Arkansas has remained the fourth poorest state in the nation, with a mounting affordable housing crisis and massive food insecurity. And a recent Scholaroo survey found the state ranks 49th in the nation for quality of life and 50th in the nation for quality of health.