The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has joined a coalition of booksellers, publishers, and magazine distributors in a federal lawsuit filed in Detroit, Michigan, which challenges the constitutionality of a new Michigan law that makes it a crime to allow a minor to examine a book that is 'harmful to minors.'  It is already illegal to sell 'harmful' materials to minors in Michigan and in most other states, but the new Michigan law goes well beyond regulations in other states by requiring booksellers to prevent any possibility that a minor can examine 'harmful' works, including novels and works of non-fiction that do not contain pictures.  Violations of the law are punishable by up to two years in jail and a fine of up to $10,000.  Charles Brownstein of the Comic Book Legal Defense fund characterized the Michigan law, which went into effect on January 1, as 'a serious threat to the way comic and booksellers conduct their businesses. The law renders classics of the graphic novel form such as a Contract With God, Stuck Rubber Baby, and Sandman vulnerable to unwarranted prosecution.'

Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) attacked the law because it would make it difficult for adults and older minors to obtain books, magazines and music that they have a First Amendment right to purchase.  Finan explained, 'If booksellers can be sent to jail for two years because a kid picks up the wrong book, they will have no choice but to protect themselves by rigidly restricting what their customers can see.'  Even more difficult they will have to determine which volumes might be harmful to the youngest minors, which could mean restricting access in an 'adults only' section to romance novels, sex education manuals, health books, volumes of art and photography, and many classic literary texts.

The CBDLF has joined the ABFFE, the Great Lakes Booksellers Association, six individual bookstores, the Association of American Publishers, the Freedom to Read Foundation, and the International Periodical Distributors Association in pursuing legal action against the Michigan statute.