Elizabeth School District is defending its right to decide what belongs on its own library shelves — against a lawsuit from the ACLU, a national organization with far greater legal resources than our small rural district will ever have. This is a grassroots effort to help fund that fight.
The Heritage Foundation and Alliance Defending Freedom are teaming up to provide institutional support for the school board's legal fight against the ACLU — a major development not just for Elizabeth, but for school districts nationwide.
A leading conservative think tank that has spent decades defending limited government and the rights of families.
heritage.org →One of the nation's premier constitutional law organizations, with a long record defending religious liberty, parental rights, free speech, and local decision-making.
adflegal.org →The Elizabeth School Board built a transparent, public process for reviewing library materials and deciding what belongs on the shelf. The ACLU responded by taking the district to federal court after it applied that process — and the district has since had to devote significant time and resources to defending its authority to make educational decisions for the students in its care.
With Heritage and ADF now involved, the message is that Elizabeth doesn't stand alone. The stakes reach beyond this one district: if outside organizations can use the courts to override the transparent decisions of parents and locally elected school boards, other communities could face the same fight.
A plain-language summary of the dispute, drawn from the district's own public statements and court filings.
In December 2024, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against Elizabeth School District challenging the district's protocol for reviewing which materials belong in its school libraries. The district's legal team has since filed formal responses opposing the ACLU's request for a preliminary injunction, and the case has moved through federal district court and into the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals on stay and appeal motions.
District leadership — including then-Superintendent Dan Snowberger and Board President Rhonda Olsen — spoke publicly and repeatedly on radio, TV, and in op-eds arguing that a locally elected school board, not an outside advocacy organization, should have the final say over what is shelved in a K-12 library. Snowberger has since retired from the superintendent role but remains involved in supporting the district's legal defense.
Discovery has now concluded, including lengthy depositions of every school board member and the superintendent. According to the district, ACLU attorneys used those depositions to question board members about their personal religious beliefs, how they pray, their voting records, and their views on various social issues — well beyond the library-review protocol itself. The district says it's become clear the ACLU and the plaintiffs believe they, not the district's locally elected board or the broader community, should decide what belongs in local school libraries.
The case is headed to trial. The district looks forward to presenting its side: a careful, board-led review process that examined tens of thousands of books and removed only those that didn't align with the district's educational goals or were inappropriate for the age and maturity of the students who use its libraries.
Elizabeth is proud to operate without imposing additional mill levies on local taxpayers, unlike many neighboring districts. But every dollar spent on legal fees is a dollar that cannot go toward classrooms, teachers, or programs for students.
In their sworn statements, the board members who voted to remove these titles cited three consistent reasons. We're describing those categories here — the graphic passages themselves are laid out in the court record, linked below, not republished on this page.
Want the primary source? The board's full reasoning, sworn declarations, and the record citations for each title are in the district's opening appellate brief.
Read the Full Brief (PDF) →Primary source documents from the district's legal defense, most recent first.
Op-eds, interviews, and press coverage featuring then-Superintendent Dan Snowberger and district leadership.
Elizabeth School District's legal defense is being funded through Rocky Mountain Voice. Give online or by mail. Every dollar spent on legal fees is a dollar that cannot go toward classrooms, teachers, or programs for students — your support helps close that gap.
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