Florida leads the nation in book bans.
It had more than double the bans of No. 2 Texas, according to a new report by national free speech group PEN America.
The report found 3,362 instances of books banned across the nation in the 2022-23 school year, up 33% from the previous one. Forty percent of those were courtesy of Florida school districts.
"Over two years, there's a pretty clear trend line of this getting worse, and this is becoming normalized," said Jonathan Friedman, PEN America's director of free expression and education programs. "I think the situation in Florida is really just escalating to a place that feels almost unimaginable to a year ago."
A year ago...
School districts across Florida have purged titles from their library shelves since DeSantis signed the Curriculum Transparency Act last year. It came as COVID-19 controversies brought more attention to what was happening in schools, especially from conservative activists and groups like Moms for Liberty.
As local chapters spring up across the state and nation, Moms for Liberty has become one of the leading voices trying to remove “inappropriate” books from schools.
DeSantis touted the law as a way to increase parental involvement in education and prevent "indoctrination." It requires districts to catalog every book they offer and put a formal review process in place for complaints
Then came House Bill 1069, which took effect July 1, further creating wildly-varyinginterpretations on what books should be removed from schools — and putting in question even more books. The law requires school districts to remove within five days any book challenged for including pornography or sexual conduct until the complaint is resolved.
Also coming into play over the last two years are state laws prohibiting instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in school. School districts have removed books citing that law, though Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody recently said it doesn't apply to books.
A look at the books
The Florida Department of Education recently released a list that school districts removed 386 book removals from 1,218 total objections last year.
But those are just titles that school boards decided to remove after receiving objections. PEN America's report goes beyond that and says state school districts banned 1,406. That's up from 566 last year.
The group's definition of a school book ban: "Any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by lawmakers or other governmental officials, that leads to a previously accessible book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished."
The list included books that were removed following official objections as well as unofficial ones, such as from concerned emails. The biggest portion of listed banned books are ones school districts removed pending a review of its content.
More than three quarters of books banned across the nation were books meant for younger audiences, like young adult, middle grade and picture books.
Nearly half of banned books included instances of violence or physical abuse, according to the report. Books with topics on student health and wellbeing made up 42%, and a third depicted sexual experiences.
Books with characters of color and themes or race and racism made up 30%. So did titles with LGTBQ characters or themes.
"Hyperbolic and misleading rhetoric about 'porn in schools,' 'sexually explicit,' 'harmful,' and 'age inappropriate' materials led to the removal of thousands of books covering a range of topics and themes for young audiences," reads the report. "Overwhelmingly, book bans target books on race or racism or featuring characters of color, as well as books with LGBTQ+ characters."
Federal lawmakers bicker on book bans:U.S. Senate hearing takes on book bans; Democrats highlight DeSantis' Florida policies
How one group goes after school books:Rockin' and rollin' with book challenges: Internal emails show Moms for Liberty plans
Context on the culture wars
What books should be on school shelves has been not only a question but a pivotal battle in Florida — and national — culture wars.
It’s far from resolved. The two sides can't even agree on the term "book ban."
This was highlighted during a United States Senate Judiciary Committee hearing from earlier this month.
“To put it bluntly, books aren’t being banned,” said Max Eden, one of the Republicans' witnesses and a research fellow for the American Enterprise Institute.
Eden, who has done research disputing book ban claims, pointed to how removed books could still be purchased on Amazon. He said that most of the books claimed to be banned by national book access advocates are still in school libraries.
But, for books that are removed, he said communities have to draw a line somewhere. He went on to read an explicit passage from “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a memoir and manifesto by George M. Johnson, who reflects on growing up Black and queer. It’s listed as one of the nation’s most banned books by PEN America.
DeSantis has taken a similar tack in responding to the controversy.
He’s maintained that the idea of book bans across Florida, which have made many headlines, is a "hoax." Conversely, though, he’s bashed books that have been recently restricted in public schools as pornographic, violent or otherwise inappropriate.
“Exposing the ‘book ban’ hoax is important because it reveals that some are attempting to use our schools for indoctrination,” DeSantis said in a statement. “In Florida, pornographic and inappropriate materials that have been snuck into our classrooms and libraries to sexualize our students violate our state education standards."
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Ahmaud Arbery's murder: Four years later Ahmaud Arbery's murder: Four years later 05:29
Attorneys are asking a U.S. appeals court to throw out the hate crime convictions of three White men who used pickup trucks to chase Ahmaud Arbery through the streets of a Georgia subdivision before one of them killed the running Black man with a shotgun.
A panel of judges from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta was scheduled to hear oral arguments Wednesday in a case that followed a national outcry over Arbery's death. The men's lawyers argue that evidence of past racist comments they made didn't prove a racist intent to harm.
On Feb. 23, 2020, father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves with guns and drove in pursuit of Arbery after spotting the 25-year-old man running in their neighborhood outside the port city of Brunswick. A neighbor, William "Roddie" Bryan, joined the chase in his own truck and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery in the street.
More than two months passed without arrests, until Bryan's graphic video of the killing leaked online and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case from local police. Charges soon followed.
In legal briefs filed ahead of their appeals court arguments, lawyers for Greg McMichael and Bryan cited prosecutors' use of more than two dozen social media posts and text messages, as well as witness testimony, that showed all three men using racist slurs or otherwise disparaging Black people. The slurs often included the use of the N-word and other derogatory terms for Black people, according to an FBI witness who examined the men's social media pages. The men had also advocated for violence against Black people, the witness said.
Bryan's attorney, Pete Theodocion, said Bryan's past racist statements inflamed the trial jury while failing to prove that Arbery was pursued because of his race. Instead, Arbery was chased because the three men mistakenly suspected he was a fleeing criminal, according to A.J. Balbo, Greg McMichael's lawyer.
Greg McMichael initiated the chase when Arbery ran past his home, saying he recognized the young Black man from security camera videos that in prior months showed him entering a neighboring home under construction. None of the videos showed him stealing, and Arbery was unarmed and had no stolen property when he was killed.
Prosecutors said in written briefs that the trial evidence showed "longstanding hate and prejudice toward Black people" influenced the defendants' assumptions that Arbery was committing crimes.
"All three of these defendants did everything they did based on assumptions — not on fact, not on evidence, on assumptions. They make decisions in their driveways based on those assumptions that took a young man's life," prosecutor Linda Dunikoski said in court in November 2021. Three men found guilty of hate crimes in the death of Ahmaud Arbery 02:18
In Travis McMichael's appeal, attorney Amy Lee Copeland didn't dispute the jury's finding that he was motivated by racism. The social media evidence included a 2018 Facebook comment Travis McMichael made on a video of Black man playing a prank on a white person. He used an expletive and a racial slur after he wrote wrote: "I'd kill that .... ."
Instead, Copeland based her appeal on legal technicalities. She said that prosecutors failed to prove the streets of the Satilla Shores subdivision where Arbery was killed were public roads, as stated in the indictment used to charge the men.
Copeland cited records of a 1958 meeting of Glynn County commissioners in which they rejected taking ownership of the streets from the subdivision's developer. At the trial, prosecutors relied on service request records and testimony from a county official to show the streets have been maintained by the county government.
Attorneys for the trio also made technical arguments for overturning their attempted kidnapping convictions. Prosecutors said the charge fit because the men used pickup trucks to cut off Arbery's escape from the neighborhood.
Prosecutors said other federal appellate circuits have ruled that any automobile used in a kidnapping qualifies as an instrument of interstate commerce. And they said the benefit the men sought was "to fulfill their personal desires to carry out vigilante justice."
The trial judge sentenced both McMichaels to life in prison for their hate crime convictions, plus additional time — 10 years for Travis McMichael and seven years for his father — for brandishing guns while committing violent crimes. Bryan received a lighter hate crime sentence of 35 years in prison, in part because he wasn't armed and preserved the cellphone video that became crucial evidence.
All three also got 20 years in prison for attempted kidnapping, but the judge ordered that time to overlap with their hate crime sentences.
If the U.S. appeals court overturns any of their federal convictions, both McMichaels and Bryan would remain in prison. All three are serving life sentences in Georgia state prisons for murder, and have motions for new state trials pending before a judge.
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