The Freedom to Read Foundation joined frequently challenged author Judy Blume and 13 national free-speech organizations in an amicus brief March 3 that called for the Harry Potter series to move back to the unrestricted shelves of the Cedarville, Arkansas, school system. Plaintiffs Billy Ray Counts and Mary Nell Counts, who are the parents of 5th-grader Dakota Counts, are also being supported in the First Amendment lawsuit they filed July 3, 2002, by the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Children’s Book Council, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, among others. ABFFE President Chris Finan referred to the coalition as a “conspiracy of like-minded people.”
The Counts’s attorney, Brian Meadors, filed a brief requesting summary judgment on the same day the free-speech groups submitted their combined amicus. Meadors argued that the three school board members who voted last June to restrict the series “made some startling admissions in their depositions,” including Jerry Shelly’s alleged statement that “I don’t like it, witchcraft and stuff.”
ABFFE President Chris Finan said in the March 4 Fort Smith Times Record that the board is “censoring books that are turning kids into readers.”
The lawsuit is the first to take to court library restrictions on the Harry Potter series, which has topped the American Library Association’s list of most-challenged titles since 1999.
Posted March 10, 2003.