Orlando Weekly: Rep. Maxwell Frost of Orlando unveils bill to help school districts fend off book complaints
Florida Congressman Maxwell Frost, D-Orlando, unveiled a new proposal on Tuesday that aims to help U.S. school districts fight challenges to books in school classrooms and libraries, which in recent years are largely coming from organized conservative activists.
The federal legislation, introduced as the Fight Book Bans Act, would empower the U.S. Department of Education to provide up to $100,000 to school districts in the U.S. to cover litigation costs and related expenses tied to challenges made against the presence of educational and library materials in schools. A total $15 million, over five years, would be earmarked for this purpose.
“What we are seeing in Florida and states like Texas, Utah and Missouri are loud and clear attempts by far-right conservative leaders to silence and erase our Black, brown, Hispanic, and LGBTQ+ communities,” Frost shared in a statement. “The Fight Book Bans Act takes a stand against censorship to firmly stand on the side of history, education, our students, teachers, and schools who don’t deserve to suffer the consequences of radical politics in the classroom.”
Frost’s proposal, introduced in collaboration with fellow U.S. Reps. Frederica Wilson (D-Florida) and Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), comes amid a national surge in book removals from classrooms, primarily at the behest of conservative activists organized with “parental rights” groups like Moms for Liberty, an organization founded in Florida that was recently designated an “extremist hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The state of Florida, however, has been leading the pack in book ban efforts, which have largely targeted books with LGBTQ+ characters, like the children's picture book And Tango Makes Three and books with race-related themes like the young adult novel The Hate U Give. Award-winning titles such as The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and Beloved by Toni Morrison have also been targeted in certain districts.
A report from PEN America released in September found that 40% of book ban cases in the U.S. occurred in Florida, which had the highest number of books removed (over 1,000) in the highest number of school districts (33) of any state in the country.
The Tampa Bay Times reported in August that more than half of the 1,100 book complaints that popped up in Florida school districts in the last year came from just two people. Activists spearheading these efforts — including sitting Orange County school board member Alicia Farrant, who pushed for book bans prior to her election to office in 2022 — generally claim they’re trying to rid classrooms of “pornographic” or sexually explicit materials, while barely disguising homophobic talking points.
But critics — including a number of students and parents — liken efforts to remove books from schools to erasing history, stifling free speech and expression, and characterize the book ban movement as an attack on civil rights.
“Banning books in public schools is a dangerous infringement on students’ First Amendment right to access information,” Jenna Leventoff, Senior Policy Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.
It also comes at a cost, financial and otherwise. Legislation passed by Florida lawmakers over the last two years has empowered book banning efforts by activist groups like Moms for Liberty, which is currently facing a crisis over one of its founders (Sarasota County school board member Bridge Ziegler) reportedly being implicated in a sexual assault complaint against her husband, Christian Ziegler — the chair of the Republican Party of Florida — and another woman.
A bill signed into law earlier this year by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (who, along with Donald Trump, is friendly with Moms for Liberty) made it easier to remove books from shelves, pending review by schools’ media specialists, who — along with public school teachers — have been feeling the weight of their new responsibilities with unease.
“I’m losing sleep over this. I’m losing weight because it’s literally making me sick,” a media specialist told the Orlando Sentinel in October, requesting anonymity.
School districts have faced legal challenges over book banning efforts, in part over First Amendment Rights to free speech and expression. The state of Florida, meanwhile, has argued that school districts do have a First Amendment right to remove books as forums for “government speech.”
“Public-school systems, including their libraries, convey the government’s message,” Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody wrote in a legal brief. Public school libraries are “a forum for government speech,” wrote Moody, not a “forum for free expression.”
The Tallahassee Democrat reported that this argument is being used by lawyers for school boards in Escambia and Lake counties, which are currently facing lawsuits over book bans.
School districts, and board members in Democratic-leaning districts like Orange County, have been placed in a difficult position through new legislation and rules from the state dictating what's suitable for school shelves (is it failing to promote the straight, white nuclear family? Then it's probably not "suitable") and what individuals with too much time on their hands can do to rid schools of books they find objectionable, even if they're not a parent of a school-aged child themselves.
Frost’s Fight Book Bans Act is supported by organizations like PEN America, the Florida Freedom to Read Project and Color for Change, and has 50 co-sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives so far.
The bill is unlikely to pass in the current GOP-controlled House, but Frost told The Messenger he thinks it could garner some Republican support, pointing to Republican politicians’ penchant for protecting “freedom.”
Source: Orlando Weekly