Six major book publishers have joined forces to sue the US state of Florida over an “unconstitutional” law that has led to the removal of hundreds of titles from school libraries following right-wing challenges. The legal action targets the “sweeping book removal provisions” of House Bill 1069, which required school districts to establish a mechanism for parents to object to any material they deemed pornographic or unsuitable.
Since the law came into effect in July last year, works including Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer have been purged from elementary, middle and high school libraries. Contemporary novels by Margaret Atwood, Judy Blume and Stephen King, as well as Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, have also been removed, according to the publishers.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Orlando, contends that the book removal provisions violate previous Supreme Court decisions on reviewing works for their literary, artistic, political and scientific value as a whole. It seeks to restore the discretion of trained educators to evaluate books holistically, arguing that students will otherwise lose access to a wide range of viewpoints.
Dan Novack, vice-president and associate general counsel of Penguin Random House, said the law had created “chaos and turmoil” across Florida, resulting in thousands of historic and modern classics being “unlawfully labelled obscene”. Mary Rasenberger, chief executive of the Authors Guild, added that the bans had “a chilling effect” on authors and damaged their reputations by creating a false notion that their books were unseemly.
A spokesperson for the Florida education department dismissed the lawsuit as “a stunt”, claiming that no books are banned in the state and that sexually explicit material is not suitable for schools. Governor Ron DeSantis has portrayed the controversy as a “hoax”, while conceding that “bad actors” such as the far-right group Moms for Liberty had filed “frivolous challenges”. Separately, a group of three parents filed their own lawsuit in June, arguing that the law discriminated against those who oppose book bans.
