A federal judge on Wednesday struck down key provisions of a Florida law that’s been used to remove hundreds of books from public school libraries since it was enacted in 2023.

“It’s a complete knockout. There’s not a single issue that the court did not side with the plaintiffs on,” said Dan Novack, attorney for Penguin Random House, which filed the lawsuit along with other publishers, several authors and parents, who argued the state law infringed on their First Amendment rights.

Judge Carlos Mendoza of the U.S. Middle District Court of Florida struck down part of the law (HB 1069) that made it easier to challenge books if they included any sexual content. The law prompted worried public school educators across Florida to remove from shelves classic novels, such as Anna Karenina, and picture books that had drawings of children’s bare bottoms, such as “No, David!”

The Florida Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment, but Novack said he expects the state to appeal the ruling.

But for now, the decision on whether a book is appropriate for Florida schools reverts back to the Supreme Court precedent known as the Miller Test, Novack said. That means a book is viewed as obscene if, taken as a whole, it appeals to prurient interest, is patently offensive, or lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

The 2023 law made educators worried that any sexual content was questionable. That feeling was enhanced when new state training for school librarians warned them to “err on the side of caution” when approving books and that they can face criminal penalties and lose their teaching certificates if they approve inappropriate books.

As a result, Florida led the country in school book bans last year with 4,561 instances in the state’s public schools, according to a report by free-speech group PEN America.

In his ruling, Mendoza listed books that had been removed from Florida schools under “multiple unconstitutional applications” of HB 1069, including “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut and “Looking for Alaska” and “Paper Towns” by John Green, among others.

“None of these books are obscene,” Mendoza wrote.

State officials argued, however, that Florida was entitled to regulate books in public school libraries because such actions amounted to allowed “government speech.”

Jason Muehlhoff, Florida’s chief deputy solicitor general, said in court that school librarians were “state actors” and thus their curation of books would constitute the state “speaking.”

“Whether it be a statewide officer or a local librarian, the point is that the government is speaking,” he said.

During oral arguments in May, Frederick Sperling, another lawyer for the plaintiffs, argued against the state’s “government speech” claim using a previous federal court ruling — which Mendoza agreed with in his ruling.

“A well-appointed school library could include copies of Plato’s “The Republic”, Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” Thomas Hobbes’ “Leviathan,” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ “Das Kapital,” Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” and Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” Sperling said. “If placing these books on the shelf of public school libraries constitutes government speech, the state is babbling prodigiously and incoherently.”

Originally Published: