By Gretchen Garrity
Some very good news out of Florida. The United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida Tallahassee Division, has ruled in Peter Parnell, et al., v. School Board of Escambia County, Florida that schools have the right to include or exclude whatever books they deem appropriate. Local control at last!
The lawsuit revolved around the removal of the book "And Tango Makes Three," which tells the story of two same-sex penguins who raised an egg. Parnell is the gay author of the children's book. According to Wikipedia, "The book does not take a stance on same-sex marriage, but rather the validity of same-sex families."
Notice how 'clever' that statement is--it doesn't take a stance on same-sex marriage per se, but does take a stance on the "validity of same-sex families."According to the Final Order, which liberally quotes the recent court decision regarding Little v. Llano County (reported HERE), "After a hearing on several motions to dismiss, the court dismissed all claims against the Florida Education Commissioner and members of the Florida Board of Education for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. ECF No. 151. It dismissed individual-capacity claims against the Escambia County Superintendent for the same reason. Id. It dismissed claims against the Lake County Superintendent in her individual capacity based on qualified immunity, and it dismissed official-capacity claims against her and the Escambia County Superintendent as duplicative of claims against the respective School Boards. Id. It dismissed claims against the Lake County School Board on the merits, based on Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978). Id. Finally, it dismissed for lack of standing Plaintiffs’ claims challenging the constitutionality of a Florida statute Plaintiffs contended caused their harm. Id. That left the Escambia County School Board as the sole Defendant, and it left only Plaintiffs’ First Amendment claims regarding Tango’s removal. Count One alleges that removing Tango violated the authors’ First Amendment speech rights by discriminating based on content and viewpoint. ECF No. 61. Count Two alleges that the removal violated B.G.’s First Amendment right to receive information. Id.This order resolves those claims."
Please note that so far, every single claim the plaintiffs brought were dismissed. That bogus ALA claim that someone has the "right to receive information" by forcing librarians, schools and library boards to carry specific books, is about to be gutted. Read on.
While the Court held that the student, B.G., had standing on Count Two, the Court eventually ruled, "The board’s lead argument is that school library curation does not implicate any students’ or authors’ First Amendment rights at all. Thus, the argument continues, even if the board removed a book based on its viewpoint, the removal would not be unlawful. I agree, and that is enough to resolve this case. I conclude, as the en banc Fifth Circuit recently did, that a public library’s removal of books does not implicate the First Amendment right to receive information. Little v. Llano County, 138 F.4th 834, 850 (5th Cir.) (en banc), cert. pending, No. 25-284 (2025). Nor does it implicate any author’s First Amendment rights."
Note how the Florida Court refers to Little v. Llano County, which has a cert pending to the Supreme Court. The Court said in part, "In that case, a plurality held “that a public library’s collection decisions are government speech.” Id. at 865 (plurality). It did so after examining numerous precedents..."
Further, it stated, "In the end, the Little plurality concluded 'a public library’s collection decisions are government speech.' Id. at 865. It did so based on 'precedents teaching that a speaker, including a government speaker, engages in expressive activity by selecting and presenting a curated collection of third-party speech,' its conclusion (quoted above) that a library collection does not constitute a public forum, and its consideration of the Shurtleff factors, 'which show that libraries’ collection decisions have traditionally expressed libraries’ own views about what constitutes worthwhile literature.'” Id.6
In its 18-page decision, the Court referenced the case of United States v. American Library Association, Inc., which "examined" the role of libraries in our nation. "It recognized that public libraries 'pursue the worthy missions of facilitating learning and cultural enrichment,' that they 'must have broad discretion to decide what material to provide to their patrons,' and that they 'collect only those materials deemed to have "requisite and appropriate quality." Id. at 203-04 (cleaned up). In other words, curating a library inherently requires an 'exercise of judgment in selecting the material' in the library, so 'forum analysis and heightened judicial scrutiny are incompatible' with the role of a public library. Id. at 205. Libraries do not exist primarily to encourage diverse views of private speakers or to 'provide a public forum for the authors of books.' Id. at 206. Instead, libraries collect books that the government deems to be of 'requisite and appropriate quality.'” Id.
The Left is going bonkers and screeching about "free speech" and "First Amendment Rights" and so on. I know that "And Tango Makes Three" was a particular favorite of MSU Professor Elizabeth Dudash-Buskirk. I can't access her Facebook page to see how she is reacting, however, because I was censored off Facebook. But I imagine she is quite upset that her book is not enjoying required accessibility in Escambia County, FL schools.Let me tell you, though, the defendants in these cases go through hell because of these lawsuits. I want to thank one in particular--Vicki Baggett. A longtime teacher in Escambia County, Vicki has withstood the kind of lawfare and defamation that makes most people shrink from taking a stand. I applaud her. Bravo, Vicki and may God richly bless you. Here she is in a recent interview:
Final Order
Court Judgment
