Gov. Ron DeSantis pivoted in his years-long campaign to take what he has called “woke indoctrination” out of Florida’s schools, signing a bill Tuesday to restrict challenges to books in school libraries.
The new legislation will enforce a limit of one objection to a book per month for people who don’t have children in a given school district; those who do have children in a district will continue to be allowed unlimited challenges to library books.
The bill “protects schools from activists trying to politicize and disrupt a district’s book review process,” the governor’s office said in a release.
The new law dials back legislation DeSantis signed in 2022 that increased public participation in the review of materials being used in schools, opening the door for unlimited challenges to books in school libraries across the state. The governor signed additional legislation in 2023 which further outlined restrictions on how information on sex and gender is taught in schools, including how parents may object to explicit or otherwise inappropriate materials .
DeSantis stood by the prior legislation in a news conference Tuesday, saying it was necessary for parents to be able to “raise the red flag” about books they felt were inappropriate for their children to read in schools. However, the governor added that the prior legislation had been been taken advantage of by those pushing political agendas.
“I think what’s happened though, is you have some people who are taking the curriculum transparency, and they’re trying to weaponize that for political purposes,” DeSantis said.
“That involves objecting to normal books, like some of the books that I saw on the teacher’s lounge, these classic books,” he added. “There’s people that will try to object to that because they want to create a narrative.”
DeSantis went on to say the new bill will counter the “passive-aggressive posture to try to create conflict, to try to generate a narrative and to advance a political agenda.”
DeSantis has denied that the state of Florida has sought to ban books, widely calling the issue the “book ban hoax” and releasing multiple statements through his office “debunking the myths” around challenges to books in Florida.
In February, DeSantis released another of these statements, which said he had “called on the legislature to enact policy that prioritizes parents’ voices by limiting bad-faith objections made by those who don’t have children learning in Florida.”
The Florida Freedom to Read Project, a group in Florida advocating against book bans, said in a post to X Tuesday that the new legislation “is not ‘mission accomplished’ on stopping the needless censorship happening in FL schools, but it might slow it down in certain areas.”
“So for that, thanks for this small amendment,” the post continued. “Let’s tackle this again in 2025.”
On the same day DeSantis signed the new legislation, PEN America, a free speech organization that advocates against book bans, released a new report that identifies Florida as the state with the highest number of book bans.
According to the report, there were over 3,000 recorded bans of books in Florida between July and December 2023. Wisconsin had the second-highest number during that period, clocking in at 481 bans.
PEN America found that from July 2021 to December 2023, over 5,000 books have been banned in the state of Florida.
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