Summary
The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s denial of a preliminary injunction challenging Idaho’s Children’s School and Library Protection Act (H.B. 710). The court held that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their First Amendment overbreadth challenge to the statute’s context clause, which requires consideration of whether allegedly harmful material possesses serious value for minors in the context in which it is used. The court remanded for the district court to determine the appropriate scope of a narrow preliminary injunction.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether Plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their facial First Amendment overbreadth challenge to H.B. 710's context clause.
- Whether H.B. 710's definitions of harmful-to-minors content and sexual conduct were facially overbroad or could be given reasonable limiting constructions consistent with Miller and its progeny.
- Whether Plaintiffs established irreparable harm and that the balance of equities and public interest favored a preliminary injunction.
- What narrow scope of preliminary injunctive relief was appropriate given that the constitutional defect identified concerned only the context clause.
Holdings
- Plaintiffs demonstrated a likelihood of success on their facial First Amendment overbreadth challenge because H.B. 710's context clause, as construed by Defendants to permit age-based and circumstance-based assessments of serious value, reaches a substantial amount of expressive activity and is not readily susceptible to a constitutional limiting construction.
- Although the word 'includes' is expansive and the definition is broad on its face, § 18-1514(6) is reasonably susceptible to a limiting construction restricting it to the categories of sexually explicit content described in the provision and requiring compliance with Miller.
- The phrase is broad on its face and may reach nonsexual or nonerotic conduct, but, considered within H.B. 710's complete multi-step framework, it is reasonably susceptible to a limiting construction covering only the sexually explicit conduct specified elsewhere in § 18-1514(3).
- Plaintiffs established irreparable harm, and the balance of equities and public interest favored preliminary injunctive relief because they presented a colorable First Amendment claim and were likely to succeed on the context-clause challenge.
Key quotations
“We hold that, against the background of H.B. 710’s analytical framework and enforcement regime, the context clause is likely overbroad.” (35)
“Plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on the merits because H.B. 710’s context clause is overbroad on its face, threatens to regulate a substantial amount of expressive activity, and is not readily susceptible to a limiting construction.” (38)
Factual background
Idaho enacted H.B. 710, the Children’s School and Library Protection Act, in April 2024. The statute makes schools and public libraries civilly liable for making certain material deemed harmful to minors available to minors, authorizing private actions, statutory and actual damages, and injunctive relief. The plaintiff private-school association and two member schools brought a pre-enforcement First Amendment challenge, asserting that the statute's definitions and enforcement framework sweep beyond constitutionally permissible obscenity regulation and threaten protected expressive activity.
Procedural history
Plaintiffs filed a pre-enforcement action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 challenging H.B. 710 under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and sought a statewide preliminary injunction. The district court dismissed the library and parent plaintiffs for lack of standing, denied the Attorney General's motion to dismiss the private-school plaintiffs' constitutional claims, and denied the private-school plaintiffs' preliminary-injunction motion. The Ninth Circuit reversed the denial of the preliminary injunction and remanded for the district court to determine the appropriate narrow scope of relief.
Remand instructions
The district court must consider in the first instance the appropriate narrow scope of a preliminary injunction limited to the constitutional defect identified in H.B. 710's context clause and conduct further proceedings consistent with the opinion.