Florida District Agrees to Return 36 “Obscene” Books to Libraries
Among the books returning to school library shelves are "And Tango Makes Three" and Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye."
A Florida school district agreed to return 36 books that were censored to school library shelves as part of a settlement in response to a federal lawsuit.
The lawsuit filed, in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, by the authors of the children’s book And Tango Makes Three, as well as three students and their parents, alleged that the Nassau County School Board wrongly removed the books from shelves in November 2023 without holding any public hearings on their proposed removal.
In doing so, the plaintiffs claimed, the board violated Florida’s “Sunshine Law,” which requires all public boards and commissions to make their meetings open to the public, provide reasonable notice of when meetings are occurring, and record the minutes of meetings, including details of discussions or debates during the meetings.
The initial reason given for the books’ removal from library shelves was a “lack of circulation” for three books — including And Tango Makes Three, in which two male penguins incubate an egg and raise its chick — and an assertion that 33 other books violated Florida’s “Obscenity Statute” prohibiting the lending, sale, or dissemination of material deemed to “appeal to prurient interests” or depicting inappropriate sexual content while lacking any “significant value.”
That decision to deem the books “obscene” was prompted by a series of challenges made in September 2023 by the right-wing group Citizens Defending Freedom, which asserted that the books contained sexual content or adult themes inappropriate for minors and lacked significant literary or educational value.
Books returning to shelves with no age or grade restrictions are:
- And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
Books returning to shelves, in the same condition they were removed, including their location within school libraries and grade-level accessibility, are:
- Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes
- Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher
- All American Boys by Jason Reynolds
- Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin
- Crank by Ellen Hopkins
- Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda by Jean-Philippe Stassen
- Drama by Raina Telgemeier
- Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
- I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Ericka Sánchez
- Identical by Ellen Hopkins
- If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo
- Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
- Real Live Boyfriends by E. Lockhart
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel
- The Haters by Jesse Andrews
- The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
- The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu
- Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
- This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki
- Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
- Unravel Me by Tahereh Mafi
Books returning to shelves in high school libraries, to be accessible to all students in ninth grade and above, are:
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Books to be returned to shelves in high school libraries, which may only be accessed by students over the age of 18 or by those under 18 who have submitted a “parental consent note,” are:
- A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
- A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
- Lucky by Alice Sebold
- Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
- The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold
- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
- The Infinite Moment of Us by Lauren Myracle
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
The Nassau County School District agreed to return all the challenged books to school libraries as of September 13, meaning they should already be in place. However, the school district has until September 18 to report that they have complied with the settlement and returned And Tango Makes Three, the books that are not age-restricted, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower to library shelves.
The district is also required to form a “review committee” tasked with examining the 12 age-restricted books by October 31. The review committee is expected to determine whether they have any literary, informational, or educational value and decide whether to allow them to remain in school libraries by December 31.
“The settlement — a watershed moment in the ongoing battle against book censorship in the United States — significantly restores access to important works that were unlawfully removed from the shelves of Nassau County, Florida’s public school libraries,” Lauren Zimmerman, an attorney with the New York-based law firm Selendy Gay, which sued the district on behalf of the plaintiffs, told NBC News in a statement. “Students will once again have access to books from well-known and highly-lauded authors representing a broad range of viewpoints and ideas.”
According to PEN America, a nonprofit that fights against censorship efforts, from July 2021 through December 2023, Florida had the highest number of book-ban cases of any state, with 3,135 bans being imposed in at least 11 public school districts.
PEN America is currently suing another county, Escambia County — covering Pensacola and its surrounding environs — along with Penguin Random House publishers, authors, and parents of students, arguing that the district’s removal of books from shelves is unconstitutional.
It claims that the book bans were discriminatory because they singled out books by non-white and LGBTQ authors and books that addressed “topics related to race or LGBTQ identity.”
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