In September, a federal lawsuit settlement forced Florida’s Nassau County public school district to restore 36 books featuring race-related or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ) themes to bookshelves. Among the books is the award-winning And Tango Makes Three, which tells the true story of two male penguins who raise a chick together at the Central Park Zoo. Under the settlement, the school district agreed that the book is not obscene, is appropriate for students of all ages, and has educational value. The parents, students, and authors who filed the lawsuit also won the restoration of classics like Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner.
While the book restoration is welcome news for families in Nassau County, elsewhere across Florida, public school students — in particular, Black and LGBTQ students — continue to confront discriminatory censorship laws and policies. Florida has led the national charge in creating a hostile environment for Black and LGBTQ public school students since 2021, and is home to more book challenges than any other state.
Discriminatory laws and policies now proliferate across the United States. In fact, a recent report found that 10,000 fewer books are in classrooms after book bans doubled in the US in 2023. The majority of US states have introduced or passed laws restricting access to information about race, Black history, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
Earlier this year, Human Rights Watch, Florida Rising, and the Rule of Law Impact Lab at Stanford Law School documented that censorship laws and policies harm students, parents, and educators in Florida. Through scores of interviews with high school students, parents, and teachers, we found that Florida’s efforts to alter K-12 curriculum and book access is undermining students’ ability to access accurate information, participate in age-appropriate discussions, develop critical thinking skills, and prepare to engage with a diverse and changing society. The people we interviewed told us that these laws and policies create an educational environment more conducive to harassment and discrimination in the classroom on the basis of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
Florida’s problematic policies for K-12 schools are primarily built out of three recent laws. The first, known as the Stop WOKE Act, prohibits instruction “embracing the concept that individuals share responsibility for others’ past actions” due to their identity. Our findings, however, show that the law has fueled censorship of information about Black history and curtailed informed classroom discussions of racism.
The second law, known as the “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” law, restricts teaching between kindergarten and third grade about sexual orientation or gender identity as well as teaching about these topics in higher grades unless it is deemed “age-appropriate,” an undefined term. Some conservative groups and parents use the vague “age-appropriate” term to attempt to ban books they disagree with. As many researchers have found, this law deprives LGBTQ students of information they need to live safe and healthy lives and deters discussions of LGBTQ identities in public schools. Meanwhile, the state permits and even explicitly encourages education about heterosexuality.
The third law, House Bill 1069, extends the “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” ban on sexual orientation and gender identity through eighth grade and applies the “age appropriate” test to high school content. It also prohibits teachers from asking about or sharing pronouns except in limited cases, which makes it difficult for them to act as confidential resources for students, including LGBTQ students who are not comfortable or safe discussing these topics at home. HB1069 also created procedures that enabled the removal of hundreds of books by LGBTQ and Black authors from Florida’s libraries.
Florida students this school year will experience curricula that whitewash and misrepresent the experience of Black Americans. In 2023, the nation rightly responded with outrage when Florida rolled out new standards requiring social studies educators to teach that slavery benefited Black Americans.
Florida’s inappropriate African American history standards are currently being taught in classrooms across the state for the first time. In 2022, the Florida Department of Education forbade state schools from offering the College Board’s AP African American Studies Course, which covers the contributions of Black Americans to US history, art, and culture.
Proponents of Florida’s policies claim they seek to reform divisive and inappropriate content, but our research shows their efforts are imposing a curriculum riddled by harmful gaps and inaccuracies that reinforce discrimination, driven by politicians rather than experts qualified to determine content that maximizes a child’s healthy development. As one Florida parent told us, “There’s an attack on Blackness here. Anti-Black policies and anti-LGBTQ policies. It’s bad, and it’s causing people to feel hopeless.”
As America’s teachers know better than anyone, determining age appropriateness is not new in education, but now, the professional expertise of local educators and librarians is being supplanted by divisive politics. Meanwhile, students, parents, and educators are left to operate in a politicized environment rife with suppressed speech, stifled discussion, and corrosive fear that their legitimate needs for inclusivity and nondiscrimination will be met with reprisals.
Before President Joe Biden leaves office, he should convene a national summit on K-12 educational censorship, discrimination, and democracy, allowing students, educators, and advocates from affected states to share their experiences. The summit would reinforce the United States’ commitments to nondiscrimination under both domestic and international law.
It is essential to safeguard democracy, which begins in our classrooms. Children in the United States have rights to information and an education free of discrimination. Children must have the freedom to read and learn as they prepare to lead in the future. State and national governments have the power — and the duty — to ensure that discriminatory censorship does not get in their way.
Amrit Singh is a professor at Stanford Law School and Trey Walk is a US researcher at Human Rights Watch.
