Arkansas Act 372 is a 2023 state law that tried to criminalize providing “harmful” material to minors in libraries and bookstores and to give city councils and county quorum courts the final word on removing challenged books from public libraries. A federal judge permanently blocked those two provisions in December 2024, and they cannot be enforced while the state’s appeal to the Eighth Circuit is pending. Other pieces of the law, including a parallel process for school libraries and the removal of a longstanding prosecution shield for library workers, were never challenged and have been in effect since August 2023.
What Act 372 Tried to Do
Originally introduced as Senate Bill 81, Act 372 packaged five sections aimed at both public libraries and bookstores. Two drew nearly all of the legal attention.
Section 1 created a new criminal offense for knowingly providing, making available, or displaying material considered “harmful to minors” to anyone under eighteen. Section 5 rewrote the process for challenging books in public libraries and, at the end of that process, handed final authority to local elected officials rather than to library staff.
A separate, unchallenged provision deleted a longstanding exemption in Arkansas law that had protected library employees, directors, and trustees from prosecution for distributing material later deemed obscene, as long as they were acting within the scope of their jobs. That deletion stayed on the books even after the court blocked Section 1.
The Book Challenge Process Under Section 5
Section 5 set out a formal procedure. A resident would file a written complaint about a specific book. The head librarian would appoint a review committee of library staff to read the work in its entirety and evaluate it. The committee would hold a publicly noticed hearing and vote on whether to keep the book where it was shelved or move it to an area not accessible to anyone under eighteen.
The change that mattered came at the appeal stage. A resident who disagreed with the committee’s decision could take the challenge to the local governing body, either a city council or a county quorum court. Those elected officials could override the librarians and order the book relocated or removed. That reversed the usual arrangement, in which selection and retention decisions rest with trained library staff applying professional standards.
Judge Timothy L. Brooks of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas found Section 5 unconstitutional on multiple grounds. The law never defined “appropriateness,” the central term the committee was supposed to apply. It also never explained what an “area not accessible to minors” actually meant inside a working library. Brooks concluded the vagueness invited arbitrary enforcement and that the process would permit content- and viewpoint-based censorship in violation of the First Amendment.
Criminal Penalties for Librarians and Booksellers
Section 1 created the offense of “furnishing a harmful item to a minor,” a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $2,500. The language was broad enough to reach a librarian shelving a book in the young adult section, a bookseller stocking a title on an open shelf, or a volunteer reading aloud at a library event.
Under the law, material qualified as harmful to minors if, judged by adult community standards, it appealed to a prurient interest in sex or nudity, was patently offensive for minors, and lacked serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for the younger audience in question. Judge Brooks found that framing especially troubling in Arkansas, because the state supreme court had previously interpreted “harmful to minors” to mean harmful to the youngest minors. That effectively measured every book in the collection against what would be appropriate for a small child, sweeping in a large range of material that older teenagers and adults have a constitutional right to read.
Brooks struck down Section 1 as unconstitutionally overbroad because it reached a substantial amount of protected speech, and as void for vagueness because terms like “present,” “make available,” and “show” left librarians and booksellers guessing about what conduct was actually prohibited.
The Court Ruling and Pending Appeal
A coalition of plaintiffs filed suit in June 2023, days before Act 372 was set to take effect. The plaintiffs included the Fayetteville Public Library, the Central Arkansas Library System, the Eureka Springs Carnegie Public Library, the Arkansas Library Association, booksellers, publishers, and authors’ organizations. Judge Brooks issued a preliminary injunction in July 2023 that blocked Sections 1 and 5 on First Amendment grounds.
In December 2024, Brooks made the injunction permanent and declared both sections unconstitutional. Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in January 2025. That appeal remains pending. The permanent injunction stays in place while it is decided, so Sections 1 and 5 cannot be enforced.
What Parts of Act 372 Still Apply
Not every piece of Act 372 was challenged in court. A parallel challenge process for school libraries, which gives school boards rather than city councils or county quorum courts the final say on book placement, was never part of the lawsuit and has been enforceable since August 2023. School boards across Arkansas can use that process to review challenged materials and decide whether to keep, relocate, or remove them.
The deletion of the library-employee prosecution exemption also remains in effect. The specific offense created in Section 1 cannot be prosecuted while the injunction holds, but library workers no longer have the blanket shield they once had against prosecution under other existing Arkansas obscenity statutes.
How to Challenge a Book in Arkansas Right Now
For a book in a public library, the process is set by that library’s own reconsideration policy, not by the Section 5 procedures in Act 372. Most library systems ask you to identify the specific material, explain your concern in writing, and in many cases confirm that you have read, viewed, or listened to the work in its entirety before filing a formal request. Library staff or the library board evaluate the request and decide. City councils and county quorum courts do not currently have override authority over public library decisions.
For a book in a school library, the calculus is different. The unchallenged school-library provision of Act 372 is operative, and the school board holds final authority over whether a challenged book stays, moves, or is removed. Contact your school district for its specific reconsideration procedures.
For librarians and booksellers, the immediate criminal risk from Section 1 is off the table while the injunction holds. The loss of the prosecution exemption still matters, because existing obscenity statutes could theoretically apply without the protective shield library workers previously relied on.
What Could Change on Appeal
The Eighth Circuit’s ruling will decide whether Sections 1 and 5 stay dead, come back into force, or get sent back for revision. The leading precedent in this area is Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico (1982), in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that local officials may not remove books from school libraries simply because they dislike the ideas in them. The Court described the library as a place of “voluntary inquiry” where First Amendment rights deserve special protection. Because Pico was a plurality opinion rather than a clear majority ruling, lower courts have read it in different ways.
In May 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit widened that split. In Little v. Llano County, the court ruled 10-7 that library users have no First Amendment right to challenge a library’s decision to remove books, reasoning that removing a book from a library does not prevent anyone from obtaining it elsewhere. That ruling applies in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Arkansas sits in the Eighth Circuit, so Little does not control the Act 372 appeal, but it signals that the national picture is shifting. How the Eighth Circuit reads Pico and the broader right to receive information will likely decide the future of Act 372’s blocked sections.
Until that decision comes down, Arkansas sits in an unusual position: a law on the books whose most consequential provisions cannot be enforced, alongside quieter pieces that already reshape how school libraries handle challenges and how much legal exposure library workers carry.