Five publishing houses and several bestselling authors sued Florida, along with Orange and Volusia County school boards, in a federal complaint filed Thursday in Orlando, over a law that makes it easier for books to be challenged.
Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster along with SourceBooks and authors like John Green and Julia Alvarez are all plaintiffs.
The suit claims that HB 1069, a Florida law that makes it easier to challenge books that depict sexual conduct or are “pornagraphic,” violates the First Amendment rights of publishers, authors, teachers and students.
“This is a stunt,” said the Florida Department of Education in a statement. “There are no books banned in Florida. Sexually explicit material and instruction are not suitable for schools.”
Representatives from Orange and Volusia County school districts told Central Florida Public Media they are unable to comment on pending litigation. The county’s school boards, not districts, are named in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also argues that the term sexual conduct used in the law is too broad, and that books are being removed from library shelves that are “not remotely obscene.”
They say the books should be subjected to a Miller Test instead. That’s the test the Supreme Court uses to determine whether a book or other material is obscene.
The test asks whether the material would be considered obscene by most people, if it describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and whether the work is of artistic or scientific value.
The publishers sued Escambia County in November 2023, for their removal of thousands of books off school and library bookshelves.
According to the Florida Freedom to Read Project, since HB 1069 took effect in July of 2023, thousands of books have been removed from school bookshelves.
