Twelve students attending Pentagon-run schools in the US and overseas have filed a lawsuit against Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth over his directive to remove books on race and gender from school libraries. The legal action, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), argues that the censorship violates the students’ First Amendment rights and harms their education by cutting off access to vital information about health, hygiene, biology and abuse.
The lawsuit names Hegseth and Beth Schiavino-Narvaez, head of the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), as defendants. DoDEA runs K-12 schools for about 67,000 children of military and civilian personnel. The censorship, part of a wider push against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) under President Donald Trump, has also led to the cancellation of events such as Women’s and Black History Month.
Examples of removed books include A Queer History of the United States taken from a high school in Japan, and Julian is a Mermaid removed from an elementary school in Italy. The purge has extended beyond DoDEA schools: this week nearly 400 titles were removed from the US Naval Academy library, including Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, while two copies of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf remained.
“The quality of children’s education, their exposure to ideas and the preparing of citizens in the next generation are all being harmed by this censorship,” said Emerson Sykes, the ACLU’s lead counsel. “This is not how public schools are supposed to work – students have a right to learn and to access information that should be above the political fray.”
The lawsuit, filed in a federal district court in Virginia, demands the immediate reinstatement of removed books and curricula. It also reveals that student yearbooks have been scrubbed of content related to gender, and that students who protested the bans have faced disciplinary warnings.
