PEN America and Penguin Random House sue Florida school district over book bans

“Books are being ordered removed from libraries, or subject to restricted access within those libraries, based on an ideologically driven campaign to push certain ideas out of schools,” the filing says. It argues that those decisions violate the First Amendment because they constitute illegal viewpoint discrimination, as well as the 14th Amendment, “because the books being singled out for possible removal are disproportionately books by non-white and/or LGBTQ authors.” The suit asks that the court restore the books to the shelves, and restrain the school district from removing or restricting access to them.

Escambia County is “a vivid example of the troubling pattern that we see across the country,” said Suzanne Nossel, the chief executive of PEN America. She added, “The rights that are at stake are interlocking: It’s children’s rights to read, parents’ right to make books accessible to their kids, authors’ rights to reach an audience, publishers’ rights to distribute their books.” In April, PEN America issued a report saying that, compared with the prior six months, book bans rose 28 percent during the 2022-2023 school year so far.

On Tuesday night, the Escambia County school board voted 3-2 to fire superintendent Tim Smith, citing staff shortages and book banning controversies, among other issues. Pressure had been building for Smith to resign for a variety of reasons, public radio station WUWF reported in March, including frustrations that he declined to unilaterally remove challenged books. At the board meeting, Smith said that he had followed district policy and the advice of the district’s general counsel. (Smith did not respond to a request for comment.)

Reached for comment about the lawsuit and the board’s vote to terminate Smith’s contract, Cody Strother, the communications coordinator for Escambia County Public Schools, responded in an email: “Unfortunately, we are unable to make comment on potential pending litigation.”

According to the lawsuit, starting in August 2022, a language arts teacher submitted lists of titles to be evaluated for removal due to content she deemed objectionable. The filing alleges that the school board “constantly acceded” to these objections, even when they were “nakedly ideological.” It also describes a change in district policy: Where books previously remained on library shelves during the review process, the district started automatically restricting access to many challenged titles. Students can only access them if a parent signs a form allowing them to enter the restricted section.

The lawsuit names 10 books which the school board removed from the shelves, overriding the recommendations of a district review committee, including two written by plaintiffs in the suit, George M. Johnson and Kyle Lukoff. The district also allegedly restricted access to more than 100 other books, including “Slaughterhouse-Five,” by Kurt Vonnegut, and “Draw Me a Star,” by Eric Carle. For many of these books, no schedule has been set for their review.

For many children, school libraries are their only means of accessing books, Nossel said. “Their families may not have the resources to go out to a bookstore or be ordering from Amazon. There are also kids for whom certain books might not be the parents’ choice, but might be something that a child wants to explore, and school has always been a place for that.”

Nihar Malaviya, chief executive at Penguin Random House, said that the publisher joined the suit because it believed it was imperative to support freedom of expression, and to support authors, teachers, librarians and readers.

“The reason school libraries exist is so they can provide students easy, free access to any kind of content that they believe is interesting,” Malaviya said.

Claire von Schilling, director of corporate communications at Penguin Random House, said that it would take “legislative and judicial action as needed” against the wave of book bans in communities around the country: “We are exploring other cases that we may in the future want to file.”

To Johnson, who has seen their memoir “All Boys Aren’t Blue” removed from dozens of school districts, and consistently appear on lists of most-challenged books, the lawsuit sends an important signal: “Anyone who thought that this would just be something that we would not fight against — I hope that this is a message to them that if this is the fight they want, then we are ready and prepared to go the distance with them.”