As Florida schools face a growing number of book ban attempts, Gov Ron DeSantis is rolling back policies that made it easier for people to question materials in schools.
In 2022, DeSantis signed HB 1467, which required elementary schools to provide a searchable list of the books accessible to students in libraries or classrooms and allow public comment on any new materials.
Other recent legislation signed by DeSantis, including the Parental Rights in Education Bill and the Stop WOKE Act, limits content about race and LGBTQ identities in schools and has further affected access to educational materials.
Florida law also allows parents and residents to object to books and have them reviewed and possibly removed from schools.
Since the introduction of these laws, Florida has seen an increase in attempts to ban books across the state, according to the American Library Association (ALA) and the free speech advocacy group PEN America.
Now DeSantis has signed HB 1285, which he says will limit the number of objections to books that can be raised by people who don’t have a child and access to school materials. Parents of children in school districts or who use district materials can still object to an unlimited supply of materials.
MORE: Report: LGBTQ content drove book ban efforts in 2023
According to DeSantis, book transparency efforts have focused on removing “explicit” material from schools. Critics of these policies argued that their vague restrictions would lead to censorship.
In the first half of this school year alone, PEN America found that Florida had the highest number of bans, with 3,135 attempts across 11 school districts.
More than 1,600 of these attempts to ban books took place in Escambia County Public Schools, which is currently being sued by book publisher Penguin Random House, authors and PEN America for removing hundreds of books from shelves for review.
These groups found that political groups like Moms for Liberty and politicized individuals are behind large swathes of book challenges across the country, sometimes demanding the censorship of multiple titles—often dozens or hundreds at a time.
The vast majority of books affected by these ban efforts are written by or about people of color and the LGBTQ community, according to the ALA.
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DeSantis’ office said the recent change in this policy “protects schools from activists who seek to politicize and disrupt a district’s book review process.”
“What has happened, however, is that there are a number of people who are demanding the transparency of the curriculum and trying to weaponize that for political purposes, objecting to normal textbooks,” DeSantis said at a news conference Tuesday. “Some of the books I’ve seen in the staff room, the classic books, there are people who will try to achieve that because they want to create a story. It’s like, ‘oh, all these books, we don’t know what’s legal or not have.’ That’s nonsense.”
DeSantis rolls back book ban law amid spike in book appeals in Florida originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
