A federal judge has denied defendants’ motion to dismiss E.K. and S.K. et al. v. Department of Defense Education Activity et al. The federal case, being heard in the U.S. District Court for the District of Eastern Virginia, concerns the removal of 596 library books from DoDEA schools.
The books were taken off shelves, and school curricula were changed, last year in response to three presidential executive orders rejecting “gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics” in agencies and instructional settings.
In the March 20 memorandum order, Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles wrote: “A pedagogical priority or other motivation set directly by the President of the United States, in accordance with his political views and no further pedagogical inquiry from the educational system, is exactly the type of content deemed impermissible under the First Amendment.”
In April 2025, 12 students of military families brought First Amendment claims against five DoDEA schools, DoDEA director Beth Schiavano-Narvaez, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Defendants filed a motion to dismiss in June 2025, while on October 20, 2025, the district court ordered DoDEA to restore the material, granting injunctive relief.
Giles’s eight-page memorandum order refers the parties to the preliminary injunction. “The Court reiterates,” Giles wrote, that “it cannot contemplate the pedagogical basis for banning” information on sex and gender in a high school AP Psychology course, lessons on immigration in an elementary classroom, chapters on reproduction and puberty in health textbooks, or “identity month” celebrations.
The order also notes, “this Court has already rejected Defendants’ position that (1) the right to receive information does not extend to a library’s decision to remove books and that (2) book removals constitute government speech.”
Although a ruling is still pending, the court found that “Plaintiffs’ allegations support a plausible claim that Defendants’ stated motivations for removing hundreds of library books set forth an impermissible partisan or political motivation” and that “plaintiffs have stated a plausible claim for a First Amendment violation with respect to the book removals as well.”
Meanwhile, according to sworn declarations from parents of DoDEA students, books appear to have been restored at Aviano (Italy) Middle-High School, in compliance with the preliminary injunction. But when a student asked to borrow three books at the DoDEA’s Fort Campbell (Ky.) Middle School, which is not among the five named in the complaint, the books were not made available. Fort Campbell's middle school librarian allegedly informed the parent that materials were under review and “all resources found to be in compliance with Executive Orders will be returned to circulation.”
The parent told the court, “I believe that, absent the requested injunction, Fort Campbell Middle School will adhere to the DoDEA implementation guidance” related to the EOs rather than the court's opinion.
