A group of authors including John Green, Jodi Picoult, and Angie Thomas has joined the Big Five publishers in suing Florida officials over the state’s book bans in public schools, Publishers Weekly reports.
The lawsuit concerns Florida’s H.B. 1069, which Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law last year. The law allows residents of school districts to challenge books that contain sexual content.
It has led to a spike in book removals in the state’s schools. In April, the literary nonprofit PEN America reported that the vast majority of books banned in American schools were banned in Florida.
Among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are the Big Five publishers (Penguin Random House, Hachette, Macmillan, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster); publisher Sourcebooks; the Authors Guild; writers Green, Picoult, Thomas, Julia Alvarez, Laurie Halse Anderson, and two minor children, represented by their parents.
They are suing the members of the Florida State Board of Education and the school boards of Orange and Volusia counties.
“The right to speak and the right to read are inextricably intertwined,” the plaintiffs say in the suit. “Authors have the right to communicate their ideas to students without undue interference from the government. Students have a corresponding right to receive those ideas. Publishers and educators connect authors to students. If the State of Florida dislikes an author’s idea, it can offer a competing message. It cannot suppress the disfavored message.”
The plaintiffs are asking a U.S. district court to strike down H.B. 1069’s prohibition on books containing sexual content “because it abridges rights protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
