A judge in the Northern District of Florida ruled against two authors’ lawsuit against a school board, claiming that removing their book, AND TANGO MAKES THREE, from school libraries violates students’ and the authors’ First Amendment rights. Authors Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, plus an elementary school student known as B. G., argue that the book, which depicts a same-sex relationship between penguins who care for a chick, was removed based on its viewpoint. In his opinion, Judge Allen Cothrel Winsor often looks to the Texas book banning case Little v. Llano, which determined that “a library’s collection decisions are […]
Book Bans
Publishers, Authors, Win Florida Book Banning Suit
A federal judge has sided with six publishers, the Authors Guild, and several authors and students in their lawsuit against Florida over HB 1069, an “overbroad and unconstitutional” law which bans books that “describe sexual content” in school libraries. The law made unavailable books including Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and titles by author plaintiffs Julia Alvarez, John Green, Laurie Halse Anderson, Jodi Picoult, and Angie Thomas. “None of these books are obscene,” writes Judge Carlos Mendoza of the U.S. Middle District Court of Florida in his decision. “The restrictions placed on these books are thus […]
Full Court of Appeals Reverses Previous Rulings, Supports Texas Library’s Book Removals
A full en banc ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned both a lower-court decision and a Court of Appeals ruling that had found a Texas library’s removal of books was a violation of the First Amendment, in a 10-7 decision. Last year, a regular three-person Court of Appeals panel ruled that the Llano County Library could not remove books based on their content, writing that, “Government actors may not remove books from a public library with the intent to deprive patrons of access to ideas with which they disagree.” The titles at issue included books about […]
Half Price Books Fights Texas Bookstore Censorship Bill
Half Price Books spoke out recently in opposition to a new bill, Texas, HB 1375, which would allow people to sue bookstores for “damages arising from the distribution, transmission, or display of harmful material to a minor.” Half Price Books owner Kathy Doyle Thomas criticized the bill, saying it’s vague, and unrealistic to expect booksellers to read and assess every single book in their stores. She told NBC DFW, “How do we know in all of these books that we have in all of the stores across the state — we don’t know what’s inappropriate. [They] could be inappropriate in Corpus […]
Florida Bookstore Removes LGBTQ Titles
Bodacious Bookstore & Café in Pensacola, FL recently had staff remove LGBTQ titles from its shelves, resulting in resignations and attempts by booksellers to hide the books elsewhere in the store. According to employees, interim manager Beth O’Connor directed them to make the removals, sending at least one employee home when the employee refused. Removed titles include Billie Jean King’s All In, Elliot Page’s Pageboy, and titles by Casey McQuiston. The removals began when a customer complained about profanity on a greeting card, prompting management to review all store materials. NBC News writes that “what began as a purge of […]
Judge Blocks Iowa Book Ban Law, Again
U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher reinstated an injunction against Senate File 496, the Iowa state law that removes books with LGBTQ themes and references to sex acts from school libraries, after an Iowa Eighth Circuit panel reversed the original injunction in December 2023. Locher wrote that the law is unconstitutional, and “makes no attempt to evaluate a book’s literary, political, artistic, or scientific value before requiring the book’s removal from a school library and thus comes nowhere close to applying the ‘obscenity’ standard that is typically used to determine the constitutionality of statewide book restrictions. The result is the forced […]