Important News from Florida and Support the Right to Read Act
/On May 16th, Pen America, Penguin Random House, and a group of authors and of parents sued the Escambia County School District and its School Board for removing or restricting books in the schools.
The suit charges that they “have done so based on their disagreement with the ideas expressed in those books. They have repeatedly ignored their existing policies for review. In every decision to remove a book, the School District has sided with a challenger expressing openly discriminatory bases for challenge, overruling the recommendations of review committees at the school and district levels. These restrictions and removals have disproportionately targeted books by or about people of color and/or LGBTQ people, and have prescribed an orthodoxy of opinion that violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
In a press release, Pen America notes that the “lawsuit brings together authors whose books have been banned, parents and students in the district who cannot access the books, and a publisher in a first-of-its-kind challenge to unlawful censorship.” It adds “the school district made clear that its interests are in censoring certain ideas and viewpoints, not pedagogy, and that it is willing to allow an extremist minority to substitute its political agenda for the judgment of educators and parents.”
Pen America certain has a talking point. Most bans were instigated at the behest of one person, Vicki Baggett, even though she was not familiar with many of them and based her complaints on information gleaned from far-right leaning websites linked to the ultra-conservative group Moms for Liberty.
Ms. Baggett is of course welcome to express her views, but it is damnable that one person can determine what other people’s children get to read, and even more so that the Board chose to ignore the school’s own experts, with “instances in which the School Board rejected a challenge from Baggett, despite the transparently ideological nature of her challenges. Indeed, the School District and School Board have consistently acceded to, and ratified, Baggett’s blatantly political and message-based objections.”
RF is stepping outside its usual digital content focus to thank Pen America and PRH (yes, even though we usually slag them for their digital content prices), and the authors and parents for their courageous opposition to the narrow-minded and rigidly orthodox agenda being set by Governor DeSantis and, alas, followed by too many school districts. But then, as OverDrive found out in Llano, Texas, it is possible for censors to shut down public library access to thousands of digital titles in one fell blow. We cannot have fair access, print or digital, if censors hold sway. Every librarian has reason to advocate against a organized, well-funded, and ill-advised movement hiding under the guise of protecting children but really pushing a reactionary ideology.
Thanks, too, to the authors joining the suit are Sarah Brannen, David Levithan, George M. Johnson, Ashley Hope Pérez, Kyle Lukoff. RF encourages purchase/license and heavy promotion of their works.
Let us hope that this is but one more legal pushback against the banners and that it meets with same success that the suit in Texas that restored books to Llano’s public library.
Why not take a stand yourself? If you haven’t yet, join the ALA-sponsored advocacy for the Right to Read Act:
Last week, Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) and Representative Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ-03) re-introduced the Right to Read Act in the House and Senate to protect our school libraries from censorship and disinvestment.
Click below to tell your members of Congress to support school libraries, then share this action with your community:
Tell Congress: Protect School Librarians, Protect Kids
This legislation has a long way to go, but if passed could be a huge step against the book-banning movement. The Right to Read Act would:
Protect the Constitutional rights of students to access information in school libraries
Extend liability protections to teachers and school librarians
Authorize $500 million in Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grants and $100 million for Innovative Approaches to Literacy Programs to help provide needed literacy resources and build strong and effective school libraries