When It Rains, It Pours
National attention poured on Escambia County School Board’s book banning
The Washington Post reports Penguin Random House has filed a lawsuit against the Escambia County School District and School Board challenging the board’s decision to remove or restrict books for school libraries. Five authors, two parents and PEN America joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs. Read more.
Last night, several parents spoke out during the open forum at the school board meeting, criticizing Superintendent Tim Smith for not removing more books from the school. School board member Kevin Adams echoed those sentiments in his complaints against Smith before Adams, Paul Fetsko and David Williams voted to fire the superintendent.
Why this matters: These headlines don’t help recruit businesses and the military to relocate to Escambia County.
Dig Deeper:
From Pen America website:
PEN America, Penguin Random House, and a diverse group of authors joined with parents and students in Escambia County, Florida, to file a federal lawsuit challenging removals and restrictions of books from school libraries that violate their rights to free speech and equal protection under the law.
This lawsuit brings together authors whose books have been removed or restricted and parents and students in the district who cannot access the books, in a first of its kind challenge to unlawful censorship.
Ensuring that students have access to books on a wide range of topics and that express a diversity of viewpoints is a core function of public education — preparing students to be thoughtful and engaged citizens.
The lawsuit says the Escambia County School District and School Board violated the First Amendment rights of the students, authors, and publishers by removing books “based on ideological objections to their contents or disagreement with their messages or themes.”
Per the lawsuit, the district also violated the Equal Protection Clause of the constitution “because the books being singled out for possible removal are disproportionately books by non-white and/or LGBTQ authors, or which address topics related to race or LGBTQ identity.”
Florida has one of the highest rates of book removals and restrictions in the country, as researched by PEN America and documented in its Index of School Book Bans.