Florida school district must restore books with LGBTQ+ content under settlement

FERNANDINA BEACH, Fla. — A school district in northeast Florida must put back in libraries three dozen books as part of a settlement reached Thursday with students and parents who sued over what they said was an unlawful decision to limit access to dozens of titles containing LGBTQ+ content.

Under the agreement the School Board of Nassau County must restore access to three dozen titles including “And Tango Makes Three,” a children’s picture book based on a true story about two male penguins that raised a chick together at New York’s Central Park Zoo. Authors Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson were plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the district, which is about 35 miles (about 60 kilometers) northeast of Jacksonville along the Georgia border.

The suit was one of several challenges to book bans since state lawmakers last year passed, and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law, legislation making it easier to challenge educational materials that opponents consider pornographic and obscene. Last month six major publishers and several well-known authors filed a federal lawsuit in Orlando arguing that some provisions of the law violate the First Amendment rights of publishers, authors and students.

“Fighting unconstitutional legislation in Florida and across the country is an urgent priority,” Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks said in a statement.

Among the books removed in Nassau County were titles by Toni Morrison, Khaled Hosseini, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jodi Picoult and Alice Sebold.

Under the settlement the school district agreed that “And Tango Makes Three” is not obscene, is appropriate for students of all ages and has value related to teaching.

“Students will once again have access to books from well-known and highly-lauded authors representing a broad range of viewpoints and ideas,” Lauren Zimmerman, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said in a statement.

Brett Steger, an attorney for the school district, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.