{"id":27872,"date":"2025-09-17T14:14:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T14:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/27872\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T14:14:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T14:14:08","slug":"federal-judge-overturns-part-of-floridas-book-ban-law-drawing-on-nearly-100-years-of-precedent-protecting-first-amendment-access-to-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/27872\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal judge overturns part of Florida\u2019s book ban law, drawing on nearly 100 years of precedent protecting First Amendment access to ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"

When a junior at an Orange County public high school in Florida visited the school library<\/a> to check out a copy of \u201cOn the Road\u201d by Jack Kerouac, it wasn\u2019t in its Dewey decimal system-assigned location.<\/p>\n

It turns out the title had been removed from the library\u2019s shelves because of a complaint, and in compliance with Florida House Bill 1069<\/a>, it had been removed from the library indefinitely. Kerouac\u2019s quintessential chronicle of the Beat Generation in the 1950s, along with hundreds of other titles, was not available for students to read.<\/p>\n

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill<\/a> into law in July 2023. Under this law, if a parent or community member objected to a book on the grounds that it was obscene or pornographic, the school had to remove that title from the curriculum within five days and hold a public hearing with a special magistrate appointed by the state.<\/p>\n

On Aug. 13, 2025, Judge Carlos Mendoza of the U.S. Middle District of Florida ruled in Penguin Random House v. Gibson<\/a> that parts of Florida HB 1069 are unconstitutional and violate students\u2019 First Amendment right of free access to ideas.<\/p>\n

The plaintiffs who filed the suit<\/a> included the five largest trade book publishing houses, a group of award-winning authors, the Authors Guild, which is a labor union for published professional authors with over 15,000 members, and the parents of a group of Florida students.<\/p>\n

Though the state filed an appeal<\/a> on Sept. 11, 2025, this is an important ruling on censorship in a time when many states are passing or debating similar laws<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent the past 26 years training English language arts teachers<\/a> at Arizona State University, and 24 years before that teaching high school English. I understand the importance of Mendoza\u2019s ruling for keeping books in classrooms and school libraries. In my experience, every few years the books teachers have chosen to teach come under attack. I\u2019ve tried to learn as much as I can about the history of censorship in this country and pass it to my students, in order to prepare them for what may lie ahead in their careers as English teachers.<\/p>\n

Legal precedent<\/p>\n

The August 2025 ruling is in keeping with legal precedent around censorship. Over the years, U.S. courts have established that obscenity can be a legitimate cause for removing a book from the public sphere, but only under limited circumstances.<\/p>\n

In the 1933 case of United States v. One Book Called Ulysses<\/a>, Judge John Munro Woolsey declared that James Joyce\u2019s classic novel was not obscene, contradicting a lower court ruling. Woolsey emphasized that works must be considered as a whole, rather than judged by \u201cselected excerpts,\u201d and that reviewers should apply contemporary national standards and think about the effect on the average person.<\/p>\n

In 1957, the Supreme Court further clarified First Amendment protections in Roth v. United States<\/a> by rejecting the argument that obscenity lacks redeeming social importance. In this case, the court defined obscenity as material that, taken as a whole, appeals to a prurient \u2013 that is, lascivious \u2013 interest in sex in average readers.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court\u2019s 1973 Miller v. California<\/a> decision created the eponymous Miller test<\/a> for jurors in obscenity cases. This test incorporates language from the Ulysses and Roth rulings, asking jurors to consider whether the average person, looking at the work as a whole and applying the contemporary standards in their community, would find it lascivious. It also adds the consideration of whether the material in question is of \u201cserious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value\u201d when deciding whether it is obscene.<\/p>\n

Another decision that is particularly relevant for teachers and school librarians is 1982\u2019s Island Trees School District v. Pico<\/a>, a case brought by students against their school board. The Supreme Court ruled that removing books from a school library or curriculum is a violation of the First Amendment if it is an attempt to suppress ideas. Free access to ideas in books, the court wrote, is sacrosanct: \u201cIf there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Covers<\/a><\/p>\n

These 23 books were removed from Florida school libraries under Florida HB 1069. In his ruling in Penguin Random House v. Gibson, Judge Carlos Mendoza named them and stated, \u2018None of these books are obscene.\u2019
\n Illustration by The Conversation<\/p>\n

What this ruling clarifies<\/p>\n

In his ruling in August 2025, Mendoza pointed out that many of the removed books are classics with no sexual content at all<\/a>. This was made possible in part by the formulation of HB 1069. The law allows anyone from the community to challenge a book simply by filling out a form, at which point the school is mandated to remove that book within five days. In order to put a book back in circulation, however, the law requires a hearing to be held by the state\u2019s appointed magistrate, and there is no specified deadline by which this hearing must take place.<\/p>\n

Mendoza did not strike down the parts of HB 1069 that require school districts to follow a state policy for challenging books. In line with precedent, he also left in place challenges for obscenity using the Miller test and with reference to age-appropriateness for mature content.<\/p>\n

The Florida Department of Education argued that HB 1069 is protected by Florida\u2019s First Amendment right of government speech<\/a>, a legal theory that the government has the right to prevent any opposing views to its own in schools or any government platform. Mendoza questioned this argument, suggesting that \u201cslapping the label of government speech on book removals only serves to stifle the disfavored viewpoints.\u201d<\/p>\n

What this means for schools, in Florida and across the US<\/p>\n

In the wake of Mendoza\u2019s decision, Florida schools are unlikely to pull more books from the shelves, but they are also unlikely to immediately return them. Some school librarians have said that they are awaiting the outcome of the appeal<\/a> before taking action.<\/p>\n

States with similar laws on the books or in the works will also be watching the appeal.<\/p>\n

Some of these laws in other states have also been challenged, with mixed outcomes. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit already struck down Texas\u2019 appeal<\/a> of a ruling against Texas House Bill 900<\/a>. And parts of an Iowa bill<\/a> currently are being challenged in court<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the NAACP\u2019s lawsuit against South Carolina Regulation 43-170<\/a> was dismissed On Sept. 8, 2025<\/a>. And Utah\u2019s House Bill 29<\/a> has not yet faced a challenge in court, though it could be affected by the outcomes of these lawsuits in other states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When a junior at an Orange County public high school in Florida visited the school library to check…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[489,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-27872","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}