Lawsuit about the removal of school library books in Florida – NBC 6 Südflorida

Since large publishing companies and authors argue that a law of Florida 2023 violates the rights of first change, a federal judge refused to reject a lawsuit against members of the State Board of Education on the removal of school library.

The US district judge Carlos Mendoza refused a state application to dismiss the case, which also names as accused members of the school authority of Orange County and Volusia County.

Six publishing companies, the Authors Guild, five authors and two parents, submitted the lawsuit in front of a federal court in Orlando on August 29. It is one of a number of lawsuits that come from the Education Act 2023 and the associated decisions by school districts to remove books from library shelves or to restrict access.

The lawsuit focuses on parts of the law (HB 1069), in which the availability of reading material, which is “pornographically” or “sexual behavior”. For example, the publishing companies, authors and other plaintiffs claim that the ban on material that describes sexual behavior violates the first change excessively.

The state's lawyers triggered a number of arguments in the search for rejection, including the selection of the library books and not the government's speech and not the first change. In the application for dismissal of the case, it also states that the government does not violate the first change if it withdraws an advantage that only makes it easier to exercise a constitutional law. “

When rejecting such arguments, however, Mendoza wrote that the state cannot “deal with the fact that discretion is what this statute eliminates”. Books can be removed if parents reject their content.

“What the court is confronted today is a regime that is not based on a solid judgment of a librarian, but about the objection of a parent, however moody,” wrote Mendoza. “What the plaintiffs claim is that school librarians of their extensive discretion have been withdrawn because they have to remove objections to books that do not contain any obscene material and may not” conduct holistic evaluation or consideration of their literary, artistic, political or scientific value “.

The application of the state board members also asserted that an “alleged violation is not (she) quite understandable and is therefore not due to a decision against them, since they only have a general supervisory authority through the true actors who remove books – the local school authorities,” wrote Mendoza.

But he rejected this argument because the State Board approved a form that is used for objections to books.

“Who caused the injury? While it can be local civil servants who physically remove the books, it is the interpretation of the law by the accused that are contained in the form of the object that the plaintiffs challenge in this campaign, ”wrote Mendoza.

He added: “Since the objection form according to (state law) is the accused of the accused of the alleged injuries of the plaintiffs of the plaintiffs” prescribed before the state board of the educational tender “.”

The decision on Friday does not solve the underlying case. Mendoza planned a hearing on May 21 on applications for summary assessment.

In the lawsuit cited departure from the library shelves such as “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Both authors were awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for their novels and other works.

In this case, the plaintiffs are publishing companies Penguin Random House LLC, Hachette Book Group, Inc., Harpercollins Publishers LLC, MacMillan Publishing Group, LLC, Simon & Schuster, LLC and Sourcebooks LLC; The author guild; Authors Julia Alvarez, John Green, Laurie Halse Anderson, Jodi Picoult and Angie Thomas; And parents Heidi Kellogg and Judith Anne Hayes.