By Scott Gilbert | Elbert County News
On Thursday, April 3, a Denver-based federal judge ordered the Elizabeth School District to place 19 removed books on library shelves by the weekend, but on the morning of Friday, April 4, a judge with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay, meaning the books will remain off the shelves pending further legal proceedings.
The back-and-forth is the latest in a legal battle between Elizabeth Schools and the ACLU of Colorado, which sued the district in December seeking the return of 19 library books that the school board voted to remove on Sept. 9 of last year and then discarded.
The ACLU alleges that the school board improperly removed the books because it disagreed with ideas expressed in them and claims that the book removal was a violation of the First Amendment, but the school district has pushed back vigorously in its fight to keep the books off library shelves, in keeping with what it says are the community’s values.
In the April 3 order, Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney — who had earlier ordered the books returned to shelves by March 25 but then briefly allowed a stay requested by the school district — ended that stay and said the books needed to be back on shelves by 5 p.m. on Saturday, April 5. She overruled each of the district’s arguments for a stay, including its request for a hearing on matters the judge had considered in written form, saying a hearing was not needed because the written filings were sufficient for her to reach a decision.