Florida school district sued after dictionary and other books removed from schools for alleged sexual content, case moves forward to jury trial

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A Florida school district, in Escambia County on the Panhandle, pulled Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus for Students, Merriam-Webster’s Elementary Dictionary, and the American Heritage Children’s Dictionary, among 1,600 other books, and designated them for review for “sexual” content. Subsequently, the school district was sued for violating the First Amendment, and a federal district court judge allowed the case to move forward to a jury trial. 

Key Players:

In May 2023, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed H.B. 1069 into law as part of the Let Kids Be Kids legislative package. The law tasks school districts with reviewing and restricting material with content relating to sexual and reproductive health, pronouns, and sexuality. “Florida is proud to lead the way in standing up for our children,” DeSantis stated following the bill’s passage. “As the world goes mad, Florida represents a refuge of sanity and a citadel of normalcy.”

The Florida Freedom to Read Project, an organization that connects parent organizations across the state to defend student access to information, uses the Freedom of Information Act to help challenge school district book bans.

PEN America, a nonprofit organization, “works to ensure that people everywhere have the freedom to create literature, to convey information and ideas, to express their views, and to access the views, ideas, and literatures of others.” PEN operates Free Expression Programs that defend the rights of writers and journalists. It joined the publishing company Penguin Random House in suing Escambia County for violating the First Amendment rights of authors, students, teachers, and librarians alike.

Further Details

According to a list published by the Florida Freedom to Read Project, the Escambia County school district had pulled over 1,600 books for review as of December 2023, ranging from the Twilight series to Ripley’s Believe it or Not to Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. The American Heritage Children’s Dictionary and Webster’s Dictionary & Thesaurus for Students were also included.

According to the project, these books are being investigated for containing “sexually oriented material.” If a book is found to violate H.B 1069’s standards, it “must be removed within 5 school days of receipt of the objection,” according to the law.

A spokesperson for the school district insisted that the books “have not been banned or removed from the school district.” 

“Rather, they have simply been pulled for further review to ensure compliance with the new legislation,” the spokesperson said.

 Outcome

PEN America and allies file lawsuits against Escambia County

On May 17, 2023, PEN America, Penguin Random House, and a group of authors targeted by book bans filed a lawsuit against Escambia County, alleging the district’s policies violated the First Amendment. 

The lawsuit points to Board of Education v. Pico, in which the Supreme Court found school administrators possess the right to determine the content of school libraries; however, their “discretion may not be exercised in a narrowly partisan or political manner,” the suit said.

Escambia County particularly has violated this standard, the lawsuit alleges, by going against the recommendations of county review committees – composed of teachers, parents, principals, media specialists, and other community members – and instead adhering to the ideological views of a minority.

“The School Board is depriving students of access to a wide range of viewpoints, and depriving the authors and publishers of the removed and restricted books of the opportunity to engage with readers and disseminate their ideas to their intended audiences,” the lawsuit states. “Such viewpoint discrimination violates the First Amendment.”

The complaint asserts that the school board has removed books based on viewpoint, primarily discriminating against depictions of LGBTQ+ relationships, pointing specifically to books like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, All Boys Aren’t Blue, and And Tango Makes Three, all of which have been banned by the district even though its review committee had acknowledged none of the books contained any sex scenes.

According to the lawsuit, 60% of the books banned in Escambia County deal with themes of race or sexuality or feature LGBTQ+ or non-white characters. 

School district files motion to dismiss

On Aug. 22, the Escambia County School Board moved to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming the school district has not violated the First Amendment as the Florida State Board of Education, not the district, has the final say in actually banning books. However, critics noted that pulling books from shelves during the review process restricts students’ and teachers’ access to them. 

“In my specific incident, there are two books that my daughter loves, and these books have been restricted from elementary schools, even at her reading level and an age-appropriateness level, and are only available in middle school,” Lindsay Durtschi, a parent in Escambia County and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said. “That is restriction of material.”

“I understand that the school board has the ability to go back and undo that decision and reevaluate, whether it be in five years, or whatever,” Durtschi added. “But as of right now, it has been taken out of our schools, taken out of my child’s school.”

Federal district judge permits the case to move forward

On Jan. 12, 2024, U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II, nominated by former President Donald Trump, allowed the case to move forward to a jury trial. He wrote that books that explicitly have sexual content in them should not be placed in “purgatory” during the review and should be available for student access, and that “officials cannot remove books solely because they disagree with the views expressed in the books but […] they can make content-based removal decisions based on legitimate pedagogical concerns.” 

Wetherell did not determine whether the school district was removing content based on ideological opinions; however, he did find there was sufficient evidence to move forward.

“All in all, for the case in Escambia County today, this is a major win. This is a major win for the students in Escambia County. This is a major win for the professionals that are hired and the media specialists to determine what books are age appropriate and best for our children, and it is a good day for the Constitution and democracy,” Katie Blankenship, PEN America’s Florida director, said.