Federal judge orders Colorado school district -- for a second time -- to return 19 removed books to library shelves

Elizabeth Hernandez, The Denver Post on Apr 3, 2025

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A federal judge has ordered Colorado’s Elizabeth School District to return 19 removed books to its library shelves — for the second time.

U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney denied an appeal from the Elbert County school district Thursday, ordering the district to return the books to library shelves by 5 p.m. Saturday. The school board voted to remove the books last year due to “highly sensitive” content.

Sweeney originally had ordered the books be returned by March 25, but the district appealed that decision.

The judge, in her new ruling Thursday, wrote that the district’s post-litigation statements that no school board member voted to remove books based on partisan or political motives did not hold weight. Emails between Elizabeth school board members and Superintendent Dan Snowberger showed a commitment to bringing “conservative values” into the district, she wrote.

“The Court’s order merely requires the District to adhere to the minimum basic constitutional requirements by enjoining the District from removing additional books because the District disagrees with the views expressed therein or merely to further their preferred political or religious orthodoxy — as was made apparent in the Board’s contemporaneous emails,” Sweeney wrote.

Jeff Maher, a spokesperson for the Elizabeth School District, said the district was renewing its emergency motion to put the order on hold pending an appeal to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The renewed order to put the books back on library shelves comes in response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and others against the school district after officials removed the 19 books. The titles — including “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” and “The Bluest Eye,” and Angie Thomas’ “The Hate U Give” — centered stories about people of color and LGBTQ individuals.

The lawsuit alleged the books’ removal violated free speech protections.

Sweeney issued a preliminary injunction last month that ordered the books be returned to school libraries and prohibited the school board from removing any more books “because the district disagrees with the views expressed therein or merely to further their preferred political or religious orthodoxy.”

The school district noted in a court filing that it couldn’t return the books to library shelves because they had been discarded after being pulled.

That spurred Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell, a Denver law firm representing some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, to donate copies of the 19 books “to help facilitate the school district’s compliance with the federal court order.”

The Elizabeth school board called an emergency meeting last week to discuss the book donation, and rejected each donated book aside from one: “#Pride: Championing LGBTQ Rights.” School board members said that book was too inappropriate for the libraries, but would be kept by the superintendent until further notice.

The school board members said the books were inappropriate for school libraries because they contained passages with sexual activity, “controversial social and political commentary,” “alternate sexualities,” “hate” and abortion.

“The District argues that the public interest favors granting a stay because ‘thousands of students and their parents rely on the District to appropriately curate its library collections,’ ” Sweeney wrote in her ruling. “The District fails to acknowledge that courts often find that ‘it is always in the public interest to prevent the violation of a party’s constitutional rights.’ ”

If the district files another appeal, the ACLU will respond, said Pablo de la Rosa Santiago, spokesperson for the ACLU of Colorado. Then it will be up to the court to decide whether to put the order to return the books on hold, stay the whole case, not issue any ruling and let the original deadline pass, or set a briefing schedule for more hearings.

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