On Wednesday, January 10, 2024, a lawsuit in opposition to ebook bans in Escambia County, Florida, could have a listening to. Suing the district for violating First and Fourteenth Amendment Rights in its pulling of books from cabinets are PEN America, Penguin Random House, and several other authors whose books are among the many banned.
This week, an inventory of 1,600 titles just lately pulled from district cabinets was launched. Acquired by the Florida Freedom to Read Project, the checklist contains books which have been focused by teams like Moms For Liberty and No Left Turn in Education, in addition to a whole lot of different books. The district eliminated the books, citing the brand new legal guidelines in Florida which ban faculties from having books with “sexual conduct” in December 2023. The titles are “pending investigation” and unavailable to college students and employees in the meantime. While these on the far proper don’t name the elimination of books from cabinets a “book ban,” the lack to entry the books from the place they belong is, by definition, a ban.
This elimination shouldn’t be the district’s first.
Among the titles pulled from Escambia below the regulation embody 5 completely different dictionaries–Webster’s Dictionary & Thesaurus for Students, The American Heritage Children’s Dictionary, The Dictionary of Costume, The Clear and Simple Thesaurus Dictionary, and Merriam-Webster’s Elementary Dictionary. There are 5 annual editions of the Guinness Book of World Records embody, eight completely different encyclopedias, three editions of Ripley’s Believe It or Not, in addition to books like 100 Bible Stories, The Bible Book, and biographies of individuals starting from Beyoncé to Lady Gaga, Thurgood Marshall to Oprah.
Students in Escambia County can’t entry books like The Teen Vogue Handbook: An Insider’s Guide to Careers in Fashion in their college, nor can they borrow books about Greek and Roman myths. Books meant to assist understanding sexual assault, teen being pregnant, and sexually transmitted infections are off the shelf, as are Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
The full checklist of 1600 titles pulled from cabinets is out there right here.
This week’s listening to is anticipated to garner important curiosity. A decide determined final week that the state’s Attorney General, Ashley Moody, shall be allowed to take part. Moody’s workplace is in assist of Escambia Schools elimination of titles, noting that the board’s actions weren’t topic to First Amendment scrutiny as a result of these actions have been “government speech.”
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