On April 29, in response to an April 1 request for summary judgment by Florida attorney general James Uthmeier and his legal team, the plaintiffs in Penguin Random House LLC v. Gibson urged Florida district court judge Carlos E. Mendoza to make his determination in a case targeting the improper removal of books from public school classrooms and libraries.
Critics argue that the law violates the First Amendment, fails to acknowledge the expertise of librarians and educators who select books and materials, and enables unconstitutional prohibitions on school materials that are alleged to be “pornographic” or “harmful to minors.” A decision has the potential to resound in Idaho and Iowa, where books have been removed pending review and librarians have been threatened with punishment for providing materials censors find objectionable.
Plaintiffs in the suit, which was filed last August in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Orlando division, include all of the Big Five publishers, plus Sourcebooks and the Authors Guild. They are joined by authors Julia Alvarez, John Green, Laurie Halse Anderson, Jodi Picoult, and Angie Thomas, who assert that book removals violate authors’ free speech and harm their livelihoods. Two Florida parents also join the plaintiffs on behalf of their children, who could not use their school libraries to access specific books that they wanted to read.
Their case takes to task Florida’s state board of education, chaired by Ben Gibson, and Florida House Bill 1069, which “requires the suspension of materials alleged to contain pornography or obscene depictions of sexual conduct…pending resolution of an objection to the material.” HB 1069 was signed into law by governor Ron DeSantis in May 2023, and has enabled the removal of public school and library materials.
In the filing, attorneys for the plaintiffs insisted that “the State Defendants devote nearly half of their brief to repeating virtually verbatim arguments that this Court has already rejected, effectively seeking reconsideration of this Court’s prior rulings,” adding that the plaintiffs “have suffered First Amendment injury that is traceable to and redressable by both sets of Defendants.”
The filing continued: “As the State Defendants admit, preexisting Florida law prohibited the inclusion of books that are obscene for minors in Florida school libraries.” The plaintiffs further note that, “even if the State Defendants had presented any evidence that Florida school libraries contain books that are obscene for minors—which they did not do—the solution would be to enforce the statute,” as established in Miller v. California (argued in 1972) and Ginsberg v. New York (1968).
Should judge Mendoza rule in favor of PRH and its associates, this would require the revision of a “mandatory objection form” for challenging school materials and the admission that HB 1069’s provision for book removal is unconstitutional. In their request for summary judgment, attorneys for PRH et al. write, “the Publisher Plaintiffs, Author Plaintiffs, and Student Plaintiffs ask this Court to remedy their own constitutional injuries, which remedies would also resolve the constitutional injuries suffered by similarly situated parties—other publishers, authors, and students, respectively.”
Twice, the defendants have exhorted judge Mendoza to dismiss the case, and in February the judge denied the defendants’ December 2024 motion to dismiss. Plaintiffs contend that, in all the materials filed since then, “the State Defendants do not identify any change in the law, new evidence, or clear error by this Court” that should stand in the way of a judicial decision.
