By Maria Ortiz
Several major US publishers sued US education authorities on Thursday Florida by state law HB 1069 which prohibits books with sexual content in school libraries.
The publishers argue in their lawsuit that the law has triggered a wave of book withdrawals from libraries that is a violation of the First Amendment.
The six publishers (Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster, and Sourcebooks), along with Authors Guild and a few prominent book authors, filed a 94-page lawsuit in federal court in Orlando on Thursday.
The controversial HB 1069 law, signed in 2023 by the state governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, among other things allows parents to challenge books in public school libraries that they consider to be pornographic, sexual in nature or related to gender identity.
The plaintiffs allege in the complaint, filed in a federal court in Orlando, central Florida, that as a result of this rule, classics of universal literature such as “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy and “For Whom the Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemingway, among many others, have been removed from school shelves.
“Florida has required these and other books to be removed from school libraries under its broad, content-based mandates, which prohibit consideration of the value of books,” the publishers charge in the complaint.
The books in question are “timeless classics, recognized for their literary value.”as well as being award-winning and bestsellers, which have been in school libraries for years and are “not even remotely obscene.”
They argue that the law’s vague and confusing language has led school district boards to rush to order the removal of “hundreds” of publications from the shelves of public schools across the state.
The law in question allows five days for the withdrawal of the challenged books, which will be reviewed by the school districts and, if it determines that they do not contain material that is the subject of the rule, it can order that they be restored to the library.
If there are any references to “sexual conduct” they can remain on the shelves, but labeled according to the corresponding grade or age.
Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has defended the rule on the grounds that grants parents the right to object to publications they consider to be pornographic or contain sexually explicit material.
The law is similar to others enacted in other conservative states, which have imposed restrictions on school libraries in recent years.
According to PEN America, under DeSantis, “Florida has banned more books than any other state” since “this unprecedented wave of censorship began” in 2021.
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