A federal judge has closed the chapter on key parts of Florida’s censorious ban on school library books that conservatives deem “pornographic” and harmful to children.
Amid a broader assault on diversity in the state, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law in 2023, known as House Bill 1069, that set up a process for parents to challenge books for removal from school libraries that they feel are unsuitable for young readers. The repressive law requires that schools remove books within five days of a parents’ complaint and make them unavailable while they’re reviewed. The process, broadly targeting books with “pornographic” content or that “describe sexual conduct,” has ensnared many titles by nonwhite and LGBTQ authors over purported obscenity.
Last year, multiple publishing companies, Florida parents and authors filed a lawsuit seeking to thwart the bill, naming as defendants various members of the state education board and school boards in Orange and Volusia counties. And the suit appears to have succeeded, in large part.
“By enacting HB 1069, the Florida legislature sought to prohibit material from entering or remaining in school libraries that is not obscene for minors,” District Court Judge Carlos Mendoza said in his ruling on Wednesday, which found the section that targets descriptions of sexual conduct to be unconstitutional.
He listed several examples:
The following books, among others, have been removed: The Color Purple, Half of a Yellow Sun, Cloud Atlas, The Splendid and the Vile, I am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them, On the Road, Nineteen Minutes, Paper Towns, Looking for Alaska, How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, The Kite Runner, Slaughterhouse-Five, Shout, Last Night at the Telegraph Club, The Handmaid’s Tale, Native Son, Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa, Water for Elephants, Beloved, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, and Homegoing. None of these books are obscene.
The judge said the law’s focus on books that “describe sexual content” is “overbroad” and “unconstitutional,” and he said the law “mandates the removal of books that contain even a single reference to the prohibited subject matter, regardless of the holistic value of the book individually or as part of a larger collection.”
Mendoza also rejected conservatives’ argument that libraries — and the books in them — are forums for “government speech.” He wrote that “many removals at issue here are the objecting parents’ speech, not the government’s,” and that “slapping the label of government speech on book removals only serves to stifle the disfavored viewpoints.” Citing Supreme Court precedent, the judge said, “To be sure, parents have the right to ‘direct the upbringing and education of children,’ but the government cannot repackage their speech and pass it off as its own.”
Mendoza declined to strike down the law completely, writing that the law’s reference to “pornographic” content can be read as synonymous with content considered “harmful to minors” under Florida law, which means some books could still be banned but only if they meet a rigorous standard for obscenity known as the “Miller Test.”
The Authors’ Guild, which was a plaintiff in the suit and claims to represent more than 16,000 members, called the ruling “a sweeping victory for readers and authors.”
State officials said they plan to appeal the ruling.