Judge strikes down parts of Florida law used to remove books from schools

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A federal judge has struck down key parts of a Florida law that helped parents get books they found objectionable removed from public school libraries and classrooms. It is a victory for publishers and authors who had sued after their books were removed.

US District Judge Carlos Mendoza in Orlando said in Wednesday's ruling that the statute's prohibition on material that described sexual conduct was overbroad.

Mendoza, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, also said that the state's interpretation of the 2023 law was unconstitutional.

Among the books that had been removed from central Florida schools were classics like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Richard Wright's Native Son and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five.

Historically, librarians curate their collections based on their sound discretion not based on decrees from on high, the judge said. There is also evidence that the statute has swept up more non-obscene books than just the ones referenced here."  After the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature passed the law, school officials worried that any sexual content was questionable, a belief that was enforced by new state training that urged librarians to err on the side of caution. Last year, Florida led the nation with 4,500 removals of school books.

Under the judge's ruling, schools should revert back to a US Supreme Court precedent in which the test is whether an average person would find the work prurient as a whole; whether it depicts sexual content in an offensive way; and whether the work lacks literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

The lawsuit was brought by some of the nation's largest book publishers and some of the authors whose books had been removed from central Florida school libraries, as well as the parents of schoolchildren who tried to access books that were removed.

The author plaintiffs included Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give"; Jodi Picoult, author of My Sister's Keeper"; John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars"; and Julia Alvarez, author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. The publisher plaintiffs included Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishing and Simon and Schuster.