Tag Archives: Penguin Random House

‘No, This Is Not a Parody’: Florida School District Bans Dictionaries Under DeSantis Law

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Webster’s Dictionary & Thesaurus and The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank are among the books that the Escambia County School District has yanked from library shelves.

By Jake Johnson Published 1-10-2024 by Common Dreams

A photo of a Florida K-8 school’s dumpster, filled to the brim with history and civics textbooks. As part of a new policy, schools must destroy all material not allowed by the state government. Photo: Yamasztuka/Wikimedia Commons/CC

Dictionaries and encyclopedias are among the more than 2,800 books that a Florida school district has pulled from library shelves in an effort to comply with a law that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed last year.

Judd Legum, author of the Popular Information newsletter, reported Wednesday that the Escambia County School District said the books that have been banned pending further investigation “may violate H.B. 1069,” which “gives residents the right to demand the removal of any library book that ‘depicts or describes sexual conduct,’ as defined under Florida law, whether or not the book is pornographic.”

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Judge Blocks Iowa Book Ban, ‘Don’t Say LGBTQ’ Law

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“We deserve to be able to express ourselves safely at school and we deserve to see ourselves in media at school, especially in books,” said an eighth grade student who joined one of the lawsuits.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 12-29-2023 by Common Dreams

Screenshot: KCRG-TV9/YouTube

A U.S. federal judge on Friday blocked key parts of what critics called a “sweeping Iowa law that seeks to silence LGBTQ+ students, erase any recognition of LGBTQ+ people from public schools, and bans books with sexual or LGBTQ+ content.”

Judge Stephen Locher determined that none of the plaintiffs in a pair of cases filed against Senate File 496 has standing to challenge the provision requiring school districts to notify parents if a child seeks an accommodation relating to gender identity, including the use of pronouns that does not match registration records.

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