A Virginia judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit brought by two Republicans that sought to limit how bookstores and public school libraries could distribute two books to minors, closing — at least temporarily — an unusual commercial strategy in what conservatives say is a campaign to protect students. The two books at the heart of the suit are Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer,” a memoir about identifying as nonbinary, and Sarah J. Maas’s “A Court of Mist and Fury,” a fantasy novel that depicts a dark fairy romance.
The suit, filed in Virginia Beach Circuit Court by Del. Tim Anderson [photo] and congressional candidate Tommy Altman, aimed to prevent the Virginia Beach school system and locations of the private bookseller Barnes & Noble from selling the books to children without first obtaining parental consent. In her order dismissing the lawsuit, Judge Pamela Baskervill concluded that part of Virginia’s state law dealing with obscenity is unconstitutional.
