Major publishers, authors sue over Florida book ban laws

In the US, six major publishers, together with the Authors Guild and several bestselling authors, have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of two provisions of Florida’s recently enacted book banning law, House Bill 1069, reports Publishers Weekly.

The complaint, filed on 29 August, argues that the ‘vague and overbroad’ statute has led to the improper removal of hundreds of books from school and classroom libraries in the state. It challenges a part of the law that broadly prohibits books in public schools that contain any content that ‘describes sexual conduct,’ and another part that bans books that contain allegedly ‘pornographic’ content ‘without consideration of the book as a whole, as the Supreme Court requires’.

‘House Bill 1069 violates the First Amendment rights of publishers, authors, and students by forcing teachers, media specialists, and their school districts to remove books or face penalties, including loss of licensure,’ the complaint states. ‘The Publisher Plaintiffs and the Author Plaintiffs … have the First Amendment right to disseminate and have read their constitutionally protected books, and the Student Plaintiffs … have the First Amendment right to receive and read constitutionally protected books, free from unconstitutional content-based restrictions mandated by the State of Florida. Plaintiffs bring this action to safeguard their fundamental rights and the rights of others under the First Amendment.’

The plaintiffs are seeking two declaratory judgments from the court: first, a ruling that the law’s prohibition on content that ‘describes sexual conduct’ is overbroad, and thus unconstitutional; and second, that the law’s vague term ‘pornographic’ is either ‘synonymous’ with the ‘harmful to minors’ standard defined by Florida law, which is appropriately grounded in the Supreme Court’s standard, or, otherwise, a ruling that the law’s undefined prohibition of ‘pornographic’ content is unconstitutional.

The suit was filed with all of the Big Five Publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster) and Sourcebooks (majority-owned by PRH) signed on as plaintiffs, along with authors Julia Alvarez, Laurie Halse Anderson, John Green, Jodi Picoult and Angie Thomas.

Category: International news