Story at a glance
- Book publisher Penguin Random House and freedom of speech organization PEN America filed a lawsuit against a Florida school district over its book bans.
- The lawsuit, filed in Pensacola district court, comes after the district removed 10 books from school library shelves and restricted access to dozens more.
- Most of the removed or restricted books touched on race and LGBTQ identity.
Book publisher Penguin Random House, PEN America, authors and parents filed a lawsuit against a Pensacola, Florida school district Wednesday over its removal of books about race and LGBTQ issues.
The federal lawsuit alleges that the Escambia County School District and the School Board violated the First Amendment by removing 10 books from school library shelves last year and restricting access to over 100 other titles.
Some of those books include “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a memoir about growing up Black and gay, “And Tango Makes Three,” a children’s book about two male penguins raising a chick together, and “When Aidan Became a Brother,” a book about a transgender boy helping his family welcome a new baby.
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Other books that have been removed or indefinitely restricted by the school district and board include classics like “The Bluest Eye,” by Toni Morrison, “The Kite Runner,” by Khaled Hosseini and “Slaughterhouse-Five,” by Kurt Vonnegut.
The lawsuit also alleges that the removals violate the 14th Amendment because the books being removed or considered for removal “are disproportionately books authored by non-white and/or LGBTQ authors.”
Out of the 154 books removed or restricted in the district, 60 percent touch on themes relating to race, LGBTQ identity or feature prominent non-white or LGBTQ characters, according to the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs, which include five authors of the banned books and parents of two district students, are asking that the titles be returned to library shelves.
“Books have the capacity to change lives for the better, and students in particular deserve equitable access to a wide range of perspectives. Censorship, in the form of book bans like those enacted by Escambia County, are a direct threat to democracy and our Constitutional rights,” Nihar Malaviya, CEO of Penguin Random House, said in a statement.
A spokesperson for the Escambia County School District declined to comment about the lawsuit.
Plaintiffs argue that the book removals are part of an effort to “censor certain ideas and viewpoints,” particularly those about race and sexuality.
The lawsuit alleges that the removal of the books began after one language arts teacher at Northview High School in Century, Florida objected to “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky being studied at district high schools last May.
Chbosky’s book is a coming-of-age story based on the author’s own teen years spent outside of Pittsburgh in the 1980s and explores drugs, sexuality, mental illness and family troubles.
Last year, the instructor challenged the book because of its “extreme sexual content descriptions, bestiality and language alert,” a local outlet reported.
But the lawsuit alleges that the teacher, Vicki Baggett, only objected to the book after learning that it was a title frequently included on banned book lists and after reviewing a “report” of the novel via a website called BookLooks.org.
The teacher “would later admit that she had not heard of Wallflower prior to her efforts to prevent it from being read in the School District,” the lawsuit alleges. “Making it clear that the book came to her attention because it was one of the books frequently targeted as a part of a nationwide book-removal movement.”
Baggett did not immediately return a request for comment from The Hill.
There were 1,269 challenges to over 2,500 books last year, according to the American Library Association’s most recent annual book censorship report. That number represents the highest amount of documented book bans since the organization began keeping track in 2001.
“The targeted book removals we are seeing in Escambia County are blatantly unconstitutional attempts to silence and stigmatize,” said Nadine Farid Johnson, counsel and Managing Director of PEN America Washington and Free Expression Programs. “The government should not foster censorship by proxy, allowing one person to decide what ideas are out of bounds for all.”
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