FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A northeast Florida school district must return three dozen library books as part of a settlement reached Thursday with students and parents who sued because they said the decision to restrict access to dozens of titles with LGBTQ+ content was unlawful.
Under the agreement, the Nassau County School Board must restore access to three dozen titles, including “And Tango Makes Three,” a children’s picture book based on a true story about two male penguins who raised a chick together at New York’s Central Park Zoo. Authors Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson were plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the district, which is about 40 miles northeast of Jacksonville on the Georgia border.
The lawsuit was one of several challenges to book bans since state lawmakers passed a law last year and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law. The law makes it easier to challenge educational materials that opponents consider pornographic and obscene. Last month, six major publishers and several well-known authors filed a federal lawsuit in Orlando arguing that some provisions of the law violated the rights of publishers, authors and students under the First Amendment.
“Fighting unconstitutional laws in Florida and across the country is a top priority,” Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks said in a statement.
Among the books removed in Nassau County were titles by Toni Morrison, Khaled Hosseini, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jodi Picoult and Alice Sebold.
As part of the settlement, the school district agreed that “And Tango Makes Three” was not obscene, was appropriate for students of all ages, and had educational value.
“Students will once again have access to books by well-known and highly acclaimed authors who represent a broad range of viewpoints and ideas,” Lauren Zimmerman, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said in a statement.
Brett Steger, an attorney for the school district, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
