A federal judge has struck down key parts of a Florida law that helped parents get books they found objectionable removed from public school libraries and classrooms. It is a victory for publishers and authors who had sued after their books were removed, the AP reports. US District Judge Carlos Mendoza in Orlando said in Wednesday's ruling that the statute's prohibition on material that described sexual conduct was overbroad, writing that it's "unclear what the statute actually prohibits" and to what detail of sexual conduct is prohibited, per the Tallahassee Democrat. "We plan to appeal, and we plan to win," a lawyer for the State Board of Education said.
Mendoza, who was appointed by Barack Obama, also said that the state's interpretation of the 2023 law was unconstitutional. Under the ruling, schools should revert to a US Supreme Court precedent in which the test is whether an average person would find the work prurient as a whole; whether it depicts sexual content in an offensive way; and whether the work lacks literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. "Historically, librarians curate their collections based on their sound discretion not based on decrees from on high," the judge said. "There is also evidence that the statute has swept up more non-obscene books than just the ones referenced here."
Thousands of books have been removed from Florida school libraries since Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the measure into law in 2023. Among them are classics like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Richard Wright's Native Son, and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. The author plaintiffs who challenged the law included Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give; Jodi Picoult, author of My Sister's Keeper; John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars; and Julia Alvarez, author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. A statement from Penguin Random House, another plaintiff, called the judge's ruling "a sweeping victory for the right to read."
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