Publishers and authors sue over Florida book ban law

Major book publishers have sued the US state of Florida over a law that allows schools to ban certain books from their student libraries.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday by publishers including Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, argues that Florida’s law violates First Amendment rights to free speech.

The suit names several books that have been removed from school libraries under the law, including works by renowned authors Maya Angelou and Ernest Hemingway.

Florida officials responded to the lawsuit by calling it a “stunt,” and have denied that the state has banned books.

“There are no books banned in Florida,” said Florida Department of Education spokesperson Sydney Booker. “Sexually explicit material and instruction are not suitable for schools.”

At the heart of the lawsuit is a bill passed in Florida last year that requires schools to develop a mechanism where parents could object to certain books found in libraries or classrooms.

It defines books subject to removal as any that “depict or describe sexual conduct” or that are “inappropriate for the grade level and age group” of students in the school.

According to a report released in April by Pen America, a non-profit advocating for free speech, Florida had 3,135 book bans recorded from July 2021 to December 2023 - the highest in the country.

Pen America has said that the majority of books removed are ones that “talk about LGBTQ+ identities, that includes characters of colour, that talk about race and racism, that include depictions of sexual experiences in the broadest interpretation of that understanding”.

Among the books removed are Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, and Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

Bestselling authors including John Green and Jodi Picoult, as well as parents opposed to Florida’s law, have also joined the publishers’ lawsuit.

It argues that the state law allows schools to automatically prohibit books without consulting “trained professionals, such as teachers or media specialists, to determine which books are appropriate”.

It adds that some schools have banned books that include the phrase “made love”, for example, without considering the context of the book as a whole.

These restrictions “apply to all grades, kindergarten through twelfth grade”, the lawsuit states, arguing that the law has created a “regime of strict censorship” in schools.

In an interview with BBC’s US partner, CBS News, Judi Hayes, a Florida mother who joined the lawsuit, said the law has hurt her son’s ability to learn.

"We're not talking about Playboy magazine, you know, we're talking about Anna Karenina and War and Peace," Ms Hayes said.

The lawsuit is seeking for the law to be amended.

The defendants named in the lawsuit include Ben Gibson, chair of the Florida State Board of Education, as well as other school board members.

It does not name Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who had previously championed the law.

In April, Mr DeSantis signed a bill that restricts objections to books in Florida schools, saying he is trying to “prevent abuse from activists” who have used the law to challenge books like The Giver and the Bible.

“I think what's happened is you have some people who are taking the curriculum transparency, and they're trying to weaponize that for political purposes," he said at a news conference that month.

Under the new rules, Florida residents without children can object to only one book per month. Those with children will continue to have an unlimited number of challenges.