Major publishers sue against book bans in US schools

America likes to think of itself as the land of the free, and in Florida, “freedom” has always been particularly valued. However, under Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, various laws have been passed in recent years that restrict constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. They are also leading to an increasing number of books being removed from school libraries because of allegedly “offensive content.” Six major publishers have now filed a lawsuit against the school authorities in Florida over these book bans.

A 2023 law requires that a book be removed from a school library within five days as a precautionary measure if a single parent or even a single citizen of the district in question deems the work inappropriate. In this context, “inappropriate” is defined as books that deal with topics such as sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or race in a way that is not considered age-appropriate.

Teachers face harsh penalties

In their complaint, the publishers state that they do not fundamentally oppose the law and general efforts to protect students from pornography. However, the vague wording of the law invites arbitrary enforcement. In fact, the number of book bans in Florida is increasing significantly. According to the writers' association Pen America, 3,135 books were banned from Florida libraries between July 2021 and December 2023. However, censorship is not limited to Florida: While the Sunshine State is a leader in this regard, more than 4,300 books were banned in a total of 23 US states within six months.

In their fight against this wave of censorship, publishers are not only citing freedom of speech, but also a ruling by the Supreme Court. In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that when deciding whether a work is pornographic or not, the work must be considered as a whole, rather than judging individual passages. However, the newer censorship procedures do not do exactly that. In these cases, the responsible school authority has the offending passage read out and removes the work from the library as a precaution. Years can pass before a final decision is made.

According to the plaintiffs, these are works of world literature by authors such as Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, Aldous Huxley, Leo Tolstoy, Kurt Vonnegut, Ernest Hemingway and Alice Walker have also been repeatedly censored as a result of this process. Art Spiegelman's famous graphic novel about the Holocaust, “Maus,” also had to be removed from a library in Tennessee. All of these censored books can easily be found and purchased from online booksellers.

Over the past two years, seven conservative states have passed laws imposing heavy fines and long prison sentences on librarians and teachers who expose children to “harmful” books.

In the US state of Georgia, a teacher was fired for reading a book about gender identity to fifth-graders. In Texas, a teacher was fired for reading Anne Frank's diary to her eighth-grader.

Censors primarily target LGBTQ+ content

Cases like these have a chilling effect on other teachers and school administrators. They often preemptively “clean” their curricula and libraries of works that could get them into trouble. The lawsuit even mentions schools that have closed their libraries completely as a precaution. No work is safe from the guardians of morality: in Utah last year even the Bible was the subject of complaints because of allegedly violent and obscene passages.

Often, it is just a few people who bully schools. The Washington Post analyzed a thousand complaints and found that 60 percent of the complaints came from the same eleven people.

The allegations of pornography and indoctrination primarily concern books with LGBTQ+ content. Other Florida laws prohibit discussing same-sex sexuality in lower school grades or generally exposing minors to “sexual descriptions or narratives.” This also makes it a criminal offense to read books with “suggestive” content to students. In this climate, teachers are often accused of sexualizing children with abusive intent (so-called grooming).

Another point of contention is the way in which African-American history is taught. In Florida in particular, teachers are often accused of being too left-wing and influenced by “critical race theory.” Critics accuse them of presenting the legacy of slavery and racism in a one-sided way by portraying whites as perpetrators and blacks as victims, thus allegedly making white students feel guilty.

The freedom they mean

Governor Ron DeSantis is a driving force behind the book bans in Florida. He often speaks about the alleged widespread “woke” indoctrination in schools. Pornographic and inappropriate material is being “smuggled into our classrooms and libraries to sexualize our students,” he claims.

After the publishers' complaint, his staff stated that the state's Department of Education does not ban books and that the allegations of a book ban were a “hoax.” The law simply gives parents and citizens the opportunity to examine and object to their children's school materials, they argued. This type of conservative cultural policy was the driving force behind DeSantis' success in Florida for a long time. In the Republican primaries, he also used it to position himself as a presidential candidate. Ultimately, however, he had no chance against the favorite Trump.

Resistance is even growing in Florida. In addition to the lawsuit filed by the major publishers – which include industry giants such as Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster and Harper Collins – appeals from the writers' associations PEN America and The Authors Guild are also pending. Federal courts in other states such as Texas and Iowa are considering similar lawsuits. Ironically, it is often conservatives like DeSantis who like to invoke the right to free speech in their fight against political correctness. Now DeSantis, who titled his autobiography “The Courage to Be Free”, is suddenly seen as an opponent of freedom himself.

The current controversy over “dangerous” books is part of a more general dispute over the quintessentially American concept of freedom, which in the past was primarily represented by Republicans. But now “freedom” has also become a central slogan in Kamala Harris' election campaign.

For the Democrats, freedom means above all protection from state interference in private affairs: the right to abortion, the right to decide for yourself who you love or, in this case, what you read. It is quite possible that this also appeals to many conservative citizens who feel that the paternalism in states like Florida goes too far.

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