In re: Gender Queer; In re: A Court of Mist & Fury

In May 2022, two Virginia politicians filed a petition in Virginia Beach Circuit Court seeking declarations that two books are legally obscene, which would prohibit bookstores from selling them. The books are two award-winning books, Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer” and Sarah J. Maas’ “A Court of Mist and Fury.” The politicians’ request invoked a rarely-used state law that allows Virginians to sue books and to compel their publishers and authors to defend them in court. After a retired state judge found “probable cause” that the works are “obscene for unrestricted viewing by minors,” the petitioners sought temporary restraining orders to bar commercial distribution of the book. But book banning has no place in a free society. 

So FIRE and the Woodhull Freedom Foundation argued, in a friend-of-the-court filing, that neither book comes close to constituting obscenity as defined for minors under longstanding state and federal precedent. The books “will not appeal to or have value to every audience,” the brief recognized, but the First Amendment only requires that the books have “value to an audience” — and both plainly do. In August 2022, the Circuit Court rejected the petitions.