(Photo by seniwati; from Flickr)
A cohort of book publishers and award-winning authors have filed a legal challenge to the 2023 Florida law that enables challenges to books in school libraries.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Orlando, alleges that the process of removing books from school libraries spelled out in HB 1069 is overbroad and has caused a chilling effect.
The action names members of the Florida Board of Education and Orange and Volusia County school board members as defendants.
HB 1069 has enabled parents to seek removal of materials from schools if school boards deem them to be pornographic or contain sexual content, in line with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “parental rights” agenda.
The publishers and authors are asking the court to deem the state’s interpretation of “pornographic” and content that “describes sexual conduct” unconstitutional.
“The State has mandated that school districts impose a regime of strict censorship in school libraries,” the plaintiffs argued in a 93-page complaint. “HB 1069 requires school districts to remove library books without regard to their literary, artistic, political, scientific, or educational value when taken as a whole.”
The plaintiffs are Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishing Group, Simon & Schuster, Sourcebooks, and the Authors Guild, plus authors Julia Alvarez, John Green, Laurie Halse Anderson, Jodi Picoult, and Angie Thomas.
Two parents joined the suit, one from Orange and the other from Volusia, arguing for their children to be able to check out books that have been removed by challenges permitted by the law.
They argue the law does not specify a level or amount of detail to determine if a book “describes sexual conduct.”
Overbroad
The law has created a chilling effect, the plaintiffs argue.
“The term ‘describes sexual conduct’ is so broad that it would require removal of the Oxford English Dictionary — which defines ‘sex’ as ‘physical activity between two people in which the touch each other’s sexual organs, and which may include sexual intercourse’ — from school libraries. The Oxford English Dictionary, however, is not obscene,” the lawsuit reads.
“This vagueness and ambiguity result in overbroad interpretations of [the law’s] prohibition on content that describes sexual conduct and chill protected speech.”
In an email response to the Phoenix, Department of Education communications director Sydney Booker said the lawsuit is a “stunt.”
“There are no banned books in Florida. Sexually explicit material and instruction are not suitable for schools,” she said.
The publishers call for the state government to keep hands off, even in school libraries.
“Authors have the right to communicate their ideas to students without undue interference from the government,” the plaintiffs wrote. “Students have a corresponding right to receive those ideas. Publishers and educators connect authors to students. If the State of Florida dislikes an author’s idea, it can offer a competing message. It cannot suppress the disfavored message.”
‘Not remotely obscene’
The plaintiffs argue that they do not wish to prevent schools from ensuring school libraries do not have obscene materials. Instead, their problem is with removing books deemed to be “pornographic that are not remotely obscene resulting from the Florida State Board of Education’s unconstitutional construction of the term ‘pornographic.’”
The plaintiffs list several books they believe should not have been deemed inappropriate by school boards, including Alvarez’s “How the García Girls Lost Their Accents,” Green’s “Looking for Alaska,” Anderson’s “Speak,” Picoult’s “Nineteen Minutes” and “Change of Heart,” and Thomas’s “Concrete Rose” and “The Hate U Give.”
“As publishers dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and the right to read, the rise in book bans across the country continues to demand our collective action,” the publishers said in a joint statement.
“Fighting unconstitutional legislation in Florida and across the country is an urgent priority. We are unwavering in our support for educators, librarians, students, authors, readers — everyone deserves access to books and stories that show different perspectives and viewpoints.”
The publishers have also taken Iowa to court over a similar law and challenged the constitutionality book removals in Escambia County.
This story is courtesy of Florida Phoenix.
Florida Phoenix is a nonprofit news site, free of advertising and free to readers, covering state government and politics with a staff of five journalists located at the Florida Press Center in downtown Tallahassee. Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
