Colorado Attorney General Sues School District for Daring to Have a Library With Books in It
**Denver, CO** – In a plot twist that reeks of 1984 if it was written by someone who peaked in high school, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser has decided that the most pressing legal battle facing the Centennial State isn't, like, fentanyl or water rights or the fact that I-25 is a parking lot. No, sir. He’s suing a school district. For having books. Specifically, books that some parents don't like. Because apparently, in 2024, the scariest thing a teenager can access isn't an unregulated crypto scam on TikTok, but a copy of *The Bluest Eye*.
So grab your pitchforks, your banned book lists, and your PTA-approved snacks, because this is some peak “both sides are exhausting” drama.
Let’s set the scene. The defendant is Douglas County School District, a wealthy, conservative-leaning area south of Denver. Think of it as the place where Karens go to retire from being Karens and become Full-Time HOA Presidents. For the last year or so, a group of parents—let’s call them the “Book Botherers”—have been on a crusade to purge the school libraries of anything that makes them feel a twinge of discomfort. We’re talking about books with gay characters, books about race, books about… feelings. The usual suspects. They successfully got the school board to adopt a new policy that basically allows any random parent to challenge any book, and if the challenge is about “obscene” or “harmful” material, the book gets yanked immediately while a committee of like-minded volunteers decides its fate.
Now, you might think a state Attorney General—whose job is actually to, you know, enforce the law—would have better things to do. But Phil Weiser, a Democrat, saw this and thought, “You know what? This is the hill. This is the hill I will die on. Not healthcare. Not housing costs. Books. About puberty.”
Weiser filed a lawsuit against the district, arguing that this new policy is a blatant violation of the First Amendment and the Colorado Constitution. Specifically, he claims the policy is “viewpoint-based censorship” that removes books based on the content of the ideas, not the actual educational value. And honestly? He’s not wrong. But the way he’s doing it has the internet—and, more importantly, my Twitter feed—split right down the middle.
Let’s hear from the “Team Weiser” crowd. They’re the folks posting screenshots of *Maus* being removed from a library, captioned with, “This is literally what happens when you let the PTA run the government.” They argue that a government official suing a local school board is actually a good thing when that school board is acting like a poorly-ran HOA that thinks *Gender Queer* is the equivalent of snorting bath salts in the hallway. They point out that the American Library Association is basically on fire right now, and that book bans are up like 300% in the last year. To them, Weiser is the hero we deserve, riding into town on a white horse made of legal briefs to tell the pearl-clutchers to sit down.
But then you’ve got the “Team Weiser is an Overreaching Tyrant” faction. These are the folks who think that “local control” is the sacred cow that must never be touched, even if that local control means a school board of five people with no library science degrees decides that *The Hate U Give* is a “how-to guide for rioting.” They argue that the Attorney General has no business meddling in local curriculum decisions. They’re screaming about government overreach and parents’ rights, which is a hilarious argument when you realize that the government overreach they’re complaining about is literally a government official saying, “Hey, stop breaking the Constitution.”
The real kicker? The policy in question is so vague that a parent could theoretically challenge *The Very Hungry Caterpillar* for promoting gluttony. “This book shows a caterpillar eating through an entire grocery store’s worth of produce in one day! It’s a gateway to obesity! And it eats a piece of chocolate cake! That’s sugar propaganda!” And under this policy, that book would be pulled until a committee meets in a smoke-filled room to decide if a children’s book about metamorphosis is a threat to the American way of life.
Weiser’s lawsuit specifically targets this “challenge and remove” process. He argues that it’s an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech. In legal terms, that’s like saying, “You can’t just ban a book because you don’t like the vibe. You have to prove it’s actually harmful, and even then, you have to do it in a way that doesn’t just suppress the ideas you hate.” Which, again, is basic Civics 101. But apparently, that class was cut from the Douglas County curriculum.
The internet, predictably, has lost its collective mind. The AITA (Am I The A**hole?) subreddit is already flooded with hypotheticals. “AITA for suing my school district because they banned *To Kill a Mockingbird*?” The top comment is always, “NTA. Your district, your rules. But also, YTA for living in a place that bans *To Kill a Mockingbird*.”
The irony here is thick enough to spread on a bagel. Weiser is a Democrat. He’s suing a conservative school district. So the usual culture war lines are drawn: The right is screaming about “activist AGs” and “state overreach,” while the left is cheering for “standing up to fascism.” Both sides are pretending like this is a brand new, unprecedented thing. But let’s be real: This is just the latest episode of “America’s Favorite Reality Show: The Book Wars.” Last season, we had Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. This season, we have Colorado’s “Don’t Say Anything That Makes My Kid
Final Thoughts
As a veteran observer of state-level legal battles, Phil Weiser’s tenure as Colorado’s attorney general feels less like political theater and more like a quiet recalibration of how a state can assert its sovereignty—particularly on tech regulation and antitrust, where he’s managed to pierce the usual partisan fog. While his critics might dismiss his approach as overly cautious or establishment, the lasting takeaway is that Weiser has proven that effective law enforcement doesn’t require a megaphone; it requires a scalpel. In an era of performative politics, his methodical, bipartisan wins—on everything from opioid settlements to defending election integrity—offer a blueprint for how the office can remain a bulwark of practical justice rather than a launching pad for ambition.