Florida judge rules against book ban-opposed parents alleging censorship, discrimination (Douglas Soule, Tallahassee Democrat/GANNETT, January 30, 2025)

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Florida judge rules against book ban-opposed parents alleging censorship, discrimination

Douglas Soule

USA TODAY NETWORK - Florida

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit accusing the Florida government of discriminating against those opposed to the surge of school library book removalsacross the state.

A 2023 law and its implementing regulations created a state process for parents to appeal when a school board decides to keep their challenged books on the shelves. But that process doesn't extend to parents who want to contest a school board's decision to remove a book.

Parents of public school students sued, arguing to U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor that the inconsistency violated the First Amendment, penalizing them based on viewpoint. 

What is viewpoint discrimination? From the First Amendment Encyclopedia | Free Speech Center

In a Monday order, Winsor – who was appointed by President Donald Trump and took the bench in 2019 – dismissed the case. He gave the plaintiffs the option to file an amended complaint in two weeks but added that it's "unlikely any amendment will cure the defects."

A big defect, Winsor wrote, is that the process is "available only to parents who had their own objection denied, making any exclusion based on a speaker’s status, not his viewpoint."

"Although it is unlawful for local districts to retain prohibited books, it is not unlawful for them to exclude books that are not prohibited," he also said. "Thus, it makes sense that the State Review Process does not offer parents wanting books retained an opportunity to appeal or otherwise access the process."

Florida Freedom to Read Project, one of Florida's most-outspoken book access organizations, has since criticized the order.

"This decision, as well as the federal Department of Education's announcement that they will no longer investigate complaints of discriminatory censorship, are very troubling as a select few are given the privilege to redefine what materials are 'appropriate' for all our children," said Raegan Miller, the group's director of development and finance, in a statement.

She's referring to how the U.S. Department of Education under Trump announced it was ending "Biden's book ban hoax," dismissing 11 complaints about book removals. DeSantis himself has used the same language to describe book removals in public schools, even as Florida leads the nation in them.

"For the 95% of parents that haven’t limited student access in the library, where and when do we get to have a say in what’s appropriate?' Miller continued.

The Florida Freedom to Read Project isn't the only group unhappy with the decision.

"The decision to dismiss the case is disappointing, and we are considering how to proceed," said Keisha Mulfort, a spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, in a statement.

The ACLU of Florida had joined advocacy groups Democracy Forward and the Southern Poverty Law Center in representing the parent plaintiffs: Anne Watts Tressler and Nancy Tray of St. Johns County and Stephana Ferrell of Orange County.

Ferrell is notably also the co-founder and director of research and insight for the Florida Freedom to Read Project.

Representatives for Democracy Forward and the Southern Poverty Law Center didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Neither did a representative for those sued: the State Board of Education as well as its members individually and Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr., who is appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Winsor rebuffs government speech argument

Of note in the decision, Winsor rebuffed the state's government speech argument.Under the government speech doctrine, the government has the right to promote its own views without being required to provide equal time or a platform for opposing views.

"(We) maintain the position that the removal of material from public school libraries is government speech for which it has the complete discretion and freedom to speak through the removal of speech with which it disapproves," state attorneys had argued in a filing.

The state has repeatedly made such legal claims over the last couple of years. It's unsettled case law, so how judges ultimately rule could potentially set powerful precedent, forever altering First Amendment law and public bookshelf access.

But it doesn't appear any such precedent will be set in this case.

"Defendants argue that the book removals constitute government speech, meaning the First Amendment is not implicated," wrote Winsor. "Plaintiffs challenge their inability to access the State Review Process to offer their own speech; they do not challenge any book-removal decisions in this litigation."

This reporting content is supported by a partnership with Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners. USA Today Network-Florida First Amendment reporter Douglas Soule is based in Tallahassee, Fla. He can be reached at DSoule@gannett.com. On X: @DouglasSoule.

Samantha Power, "I Ran U.S.A.I.D. Killing It Is a Win for Autocrats Everywhere". (NY Times column, February 6, 2025).

Thank you, Samantha Power, for running AID to advance the goals of U.S. foreign policy.  From The New York Times: 

OPINION

GUEST ESSAY

I Ran U.S.A.I.D. Killing It Is a Win for Autocrats Everywhere.

Feb. 6, 2025

Credit...Jemal Countess/Getty Images

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By Samantha Power

Ms. Power was the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development in the Biden administration.

We are witnessing one of the worst and most costly foreign policy blunders in U.S. history. Less than three weeks into Donald Trump’s second term, he, Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have halted the U.S. Agency for International Development’s aid programs around the world. In so doing, they have imperiled millions of lives, thousands of American jobs and billions of dollars of investment in American small businesses and farms while severely undermining our national security and global influence — all while authoritarians and extremists celebrate their luck.

I am shocked by the gleeful assault perpetrated by our own government against U.S.A.I.D.’s programs and the public servants who work on them. But after running the agency for four years, I am not surprised that the attacks are being cheered by Moscow and Beijing. They understand what those seeking to dismantle the agency are desperate to hide from the American people: U.S.A.I.D. has become America’s superpower in a world defined by threats that cross borders and amid growing strategic competition.

The assistance provided by U.S.A.I.D. comes in many forms, and with a budget of less than 1 percent of the U.S. government’s overall annual spending, it, alone, is no panacea for the world’s major challenges. Like all government agencies, it could be more efficient, and making it so was an effort I spearheaded during my tenure. Yet for much of the world population, the investments and work of U.S.A.I.D. make up the primary (and often only) contact with the United States.

Some investments save lives almost immediately — like the medicines dispensed to 500,000 children with H.I.V., or the nutrient-rich food manufactured in states like Rhode Island and Georgia that pulls starving children from the brink of death. Out of the $38 billion that U.S.A.I.D. spent in fiscal year 2023, nearly $20 billion was for health programs (such as those that combat malaria, tuberculosis, H.I.V./AIDS and infectious disease outbreaks) and humanitarian assistance to respond to emergencies and help stabilize war-torn regions. Other U.S.A.I.D. investments are less visible but pay dividends in the longer term, such as giving girls a chance to get an education and enter the work force, or growing local economies.

Many of the agency’s most significant investments — like helping communities rebuild after ISIS has been defeated or improving poor countries’ ability to suppress deadly infectious disease outbreaks — are immensely important for national security. And yet U.S.A.I.D. is no longer monitoring bird flu in 49 countries as it was three weeks ago; it has stopped working with at-risk youth in Central America to prevent gang violence that spurs migration; it is not cleaning up fields poisoned by Agent Orange in Vietnam; it is not eradicating polio; it is not collaborating with communities in countries like Syria, Morocco and Kazakhstan to reduce vulnerability to radicalization. The costs of dismantling these programs — and thus perpetrating these harms — will be felt for generations to come.

Of course, the agency I have just described bears no resemblance to the “radical left” and “criminal” phantom that Mr. Trump is slaying. In addition to extensive oversight from Congress, U.S.A.I.D. meticulously documented all of its programs and expenditures online. It is perhaps not a coincidence that one of the first acts of the men intent on killing the agency was to have the U.S.A.I.D. website go dark.

In fact, U.S.A.I.D. has generated vast stores of political capital in the more than 100 countries where it works, making it more likely that when the United States makes hard requests of their leaders — for example, to send peacekeepers to a war zone, to help a U.S. company enter a new market, or to extradite a criminal to the United States — that they say yes.

That partly explains why the attacks on U.S.A.I.D.’s work from within the U.S. government are being welcomed by autocrats. During my tenure as U.S.A.I.D. administrator, we saw a significant uptick in attacks by China and Russia on the agency. Last April, the Chinese government issued an over 20-page attack on U.S.A.I.D.’s work, offering up a litany of false claims about how the United States had “acted recklessly, committed numerous misdeeds and committed numerous crimes.” In the last six months of the Biden administration, we documented more than 80 foreign propaganda campaigns targeting U.S.A.I.D.’s work in local languages in every region of the world.

After U.S.A.I.D. expanded its partnerships in the Pacific Islands in 2023, Chinese and Russian state-backed media spread disinformation before the 2024 general election in the Solomon Islands. The false claims suggested that U.S.A.I.D. planned to incite riots and orchestrate an electoral coup. Russian intelligence used a new media outlet called African Initiative to smear U.S. health programs in Africa, including those that have helped turn the tide against diseases like H.I.V. and malaria, claiming the programs were covertly carrying out biological testing.

U.S.A.I.D. has enjoyed tremendous bipartisan support in the six decades since it was created by President John F. Kennedy, and later authorized by Congress. During the previous Trump administration, efforts to significantly reduce its budget were rebuffed by Republicans who, as now, controlled the House and the Senate. Many of us in the Biden administration believed that senior national security officials on Mr. Trump’s team who saw how bold China had become in expanding its global investments and influence — and who learned the hard lesson from the pandemic that threats that cross borders can cause colossal harm — would recognize that U.S.A.I.D. had become the ground game in U.S. foreign policy.

In the briefings and materials we provided to the incoming team, we also shared how U.S.A.I.D. had expanded its activities recently in areas that are particularly threatening to China and Russia — increasing efforts to expose corruption, supporting countries as they try to renegotiate usurious debt they have incurred to China, and developing frameworks to diversify U.S. supply chains and expand critical mineral imports to the United States — which are essential to powering America’s economic future.

Secretary Rubio says there are parts of U.S.A.I.D.’s work that should be preserved, but the administration informed staff on Thursday that it plans to retain only about 290 of the 14,000 employees worldwide. U.S.A.I.D.’s American staff and their families who are being abruptly recalled from the field deserve so much better. Many deployed to the most dangerous regions in the world; more than 100 U.S.A.I.D. staff have died in the line of duty. Mr. Rubio says he has granted waivers for certain programs to continue, but the mass layoffs have meant that those programs have been paralyzed. Many of the hungry and sick people who depend on U.S.A.I.D. are at risk of dying.

Unless these cruel and immensely counterproductive actions are reversed by the administration — or Republicans in Congress join Democrats in an effort to roll them back — future generations will marvel that it wasn’t China’s actions that eroded U.S. standing and global security, paving the way for Beijing to become the partner of choice around the world. Instead, it was an American president and the billionaire he unleashed to shoot first and aim later, eliminating an institution that is a cost-effective example of what once distinguished the United States from our adversaries.

Samantha Power is the former administrator of the United States Agency for International Development.

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