Major U.S. publishers have filed a lawsuit against Florida over a law that allows schools to ban the distribution of “sexually explicit” or “inappropriate” books in their libraries.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday by publishers including Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, alleges that Florida’s law violates the First Amendment’s right to free speech and bans authors such as Maya Angelou and Ernest Hemingway.
There are no banned books in Florida. “Sexually explicit materials are not appropriate for schools,” said Sydney Booker, spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Education.
It is a law passed in Florida last year that requires schools to develop a mechanism for parents to object to certain books being kept in libraries or classrooms.
The law defines books that must be removed from libraries as books that “depict sexual conduct” or that are “inappropriate for the grade level and age group of students at the school.”
There were 3,135 book bans in Florida from July 2021 to December 2023, according to a report released in April by Penn America, a nonprofit that advocates for free speech.
The organization said most of the books removed were books that “talk about LGBTQ+, race and racism, including depictions of sexual experiences in the broadest sense of the word.”
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