A U.S judge has ruled in favour of 12 students who sued for the right to access age-appropriate books on topics including race and gender which has been removed from their school shelves by The Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA).
The department runs more than 67,000 schools for military children removed and censored material related to gender and race across its schools. A federal judge ruled that the removal of this literature violated students’ First Amendment rights, which protects: freedom of speech, religion, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the government.
In April, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Kentucky, and the ACLU of Virginia filed a complaint on behalf of the 12 students and their families challenging the DoDEA’s removal of books from its schools’ classrooms and libraries in response to Trump’s anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-DEI (Diversity, Equality and Inclusion) executive orders (14168, 14185, and 14190.)
U.S. District Judge, Patricia Tolliver Giles’s, recent decision (20th October) grants a preliminary injunction sought by the 12 students who attend DoDEA schools. The injunction blocks the department from enforcing the three listed executive orders and, as a result, requires those schools to return nearly 600 books for students to access while the case proceeds.
According to the ACLU, books ‘quarantined’ by DoDEA schools included titles such as: To Kill a Mockingbird, Fahrenheit 451, The Kite Runner, A Queer History of the United States, Julian Is a Mermaid, and many others.
In a statement, Emerson Sykes, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said: “The censorship taking place in DoDEA schools as a result of these executive orders was astonishing in its scope and scale, and we couldn’t be more pleased that the court has vindicated the First Amendment rights of the students this has impacted.
“By quarantining library books and whitewashing curricula in its civilian schools, the Department of Defense Education Activity violated students’ First Amendment rights,” ACLU of Virginia senior supervising attorney Matt Callahan said. “Today’s ruling affirms that government can’t scrub references to race and gender from public school libraries and classrooms just because the Trump administration doesn’t like certain viewpoints on those topics.
“Removing books from school libraries just because this administration doesn’t like the content is censorship, plain and simple,” said Corey Shapiro, legal director for the ACLU of Kentucky. “The materials removed are clearly age-appropriate and are only offensive to those who are afraid of a free-thinking population.”
