Protect Democracy is partnering with PEN America on the federal lawsuit against the Escambia School Board for its removals and restrictions of books from school libraries.
On WCOA this morning, Protect Democracy’s counsel, Shalini Agarwal, discussed the lawsuit.
Three Questions
Why file it in here?
What are the claims?
“The Freedom of Speech claim is that while school officials and school boards, they do have the power to determine what’s age appropriate in their libraries, they cannot remove books based on disagreement with the ideas therein, and we think the removal that’s centered largely on books by and about people of color about race and racism and about LGBTQ+ status, that all of that is indicative of a First Amendment violation.”
“And then the Equal Protection Clause is because the status of the authors and the characters that they’re talking about, the authors, it appears to be a pattern and has been cited as one of the reasons for wanting to remove the books. That is discriminatory.”
Did you watch Tuesday’s school board meeting?
“We did notice that as we were preparing the lawsuit. We were like, ‘Wow, this is also really remarkable sort of breach of process.’ So really, really something. I haven’t seen at a school board anything like that before.”
