Publishers And Authors Sue Florida Over Book Bans

August 31, 2024 Christianists, Republicans

Via press release from Penguin Random House:

Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster, and Sourcebooks have filed a lawsuit against Florida public officials, challenging sweeping book removal provisions of HB 1069, an education law that restricts books in school libraries.

The additional plaintiffs joining the publishers are the Authors Guild, bestselling authors Julia Alvarez, Laurie Halse Anderson, John Green, Jodi Picoult, and Angie Thomas, two students, and two parents.

As a result of HB 1069, hundreds of titles have been banned across the state since the bill went into effect in July 2023.

The list of banned books includes classics such as Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, as well as contemporary novels by bestselling authors such as Margaret Atwood, Judy Blume, and Stephen King.

Among nonfiction titles, accounts of the Holocaust such as The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank have been removed.

HB 1069’s book removal provisions violate the Supreme Court test, articulated in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), evaluating media content for obscenity by reviewing works as a whole for their literary, artistic, political, and scientific value, and extended to minors in Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205 (1975).

The lawsuit focuses on restoring the discretion of trained educators to evaluate books holistically to avoid harm to students who will otherwise lose access to a wide range of viewpoints. 

Read the full press release.



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