3 May 25-31, 2023 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | Contents | Letters | news | night+Day | CuLture | Cafe | MusiC | ▼ FLORIDA BANNER DAZE FLORIDA SCHOOL DISTRICT SUED OVER BOOK BANS. BY ALEX DELUCA T he nonprofit PEN America, American publisher Penguin Random House, and several au- thors have filed a lawsuit in fed- eral court accusing the Escambia County School District and its school board of violating the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause by singling out li- brary books for removal based on LGBTQ and race-related content. “The majority of these books have been targeted simply because they address themes relating to race, sexuality, or gender identity,” the lawsuit, filed in Florida’s Northern Dis- trict Court on May 17 and attached at the end of this story, reads. “The clear intent is to ex- clude speech by authors based on their race, sexuality, or gender identity.” PEN America, which records book ban in- cidents across the country, has documented hundreds of book challenges across Florida. The organization found that after more than 200 books were banned in various Florida school districts between the summer of 2021 and 2022, another 357 books were removed from school shelves between July and De- cember 2022. Florida had the second-highest number of book-banning incidents in the nation during that period, trailing only Texas. Escambia, the westernmost county in the state, has consistently clocked in the most book challenges among Florida districts. Ac- cording to PEN America, nearly 200 books have been challenged in Escambia County schools. While district committees removed five books, the school board has removed ten, and another 139 remain restricted and re- quire parental permission. The surge in book removals — many of which are about race, sexuality, sexual orienta- tion, and gender identity — comes amid a flurry of new Florida laws and administrative rules backed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, in- cluding the Stop WOKE Act, which restricts teaching about systemic racism in schools, and the state’s “Don’t Say Gay” regulations, which ban instruction involving gender identity and sexual orientation through the end of high school under a Department of Education rule. The new laws don’t ban specific titles, but they’ve opened the door for right-wing activ- ists, including members of the group Moms for Liberty, to challenge dozens of books in Florida schoolhouses. The restrictions have been cited by teachers, librarians, administra- tors, and parents alike as the reason for books’ removal from school shelves. The recently filed lawsuit accuses Escam- bia County school board membersof repeat- edly ordering the removal of books against the recommendations of experts within the school district and the district review committee. “In every decision to remove a book, the School District has sided with a challenger expressing openly discriminatory bases for challenge, overruling the recommendations of review committees at the school and dis- trict levels,” the complaint reads. While the state has argued that the “Don’t Say Gay” restrictions apply only to in-class instructional materials, the lawsuit says that Escambia County “appears to have adopted a new practice of automatically subjecting to restricted access any book challenged on the ground that it violates” the Parental Rights in Education Act, Florida’s first “Don’t Say Gay” law, passed in 2022. “As a result of this practice, challenged books that merely recognize the existence of same-sex relationships or transgender per- sons are being subject to restricted access for the pendency of the — often indefinite — re- view period,” the lawsuit alleges. According to the pleading, some restricted books have no explicit content but were chal- lenged simply because they contain gay char- acters, including Milo Imagines the World by Newberry Medal win- ner Matt de la Peña. The authors in- volved in the suit in- clude award-winning children’s book illus- trator Sarah Brannen and young-adult fic- tion authors George M. Johnson, Ashley Hope Pérez, and David Levithan. In a press release, Pérez said that as a former public high school English teacher, she under- stands firsthand how important libraries are. “Young readers in Escambia schools and across the nation deserve a complete and hon- est education, one that provides them with full access in libraries to a wide range of literature that reflects varied viewpoints and that ex- plores the diversity of human experiences,” says Pérez, author of Out of Darkness, a book chronicling the romance between a Mexican- American teenage girl and an African-Ameri- can teenage boy in 1930s New London, Texas, before the 1937 New London School explosion. Escambia County didn’t immediately re- spond to New Times’ request for comment. | RIPTIDE | Photo courtesy Penguin Random House ▼ FLORIDA BUZZ KILL STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL AIMS TO EXTERMINATE WEED REFERENDUM. BY ALEX DELUCA O ver the past year, a group bankrolled by Florida-based medical cannabis giant Trulieve has been steadily closing in on the number of signatures it needs to get weed legalization on Florida’s 2024 general election ballot. The measure would bring to fruition years of legalization efforts from various organiza- tions, allowing adults to possess up to three ounces of marijuana and five grams of cannabis concentrate. But not if the state’s top attorney gets her way. On May 15, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody — who is wed to a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration special agent and has a long his- tory of thwarting attempts to legalize the sticky icky — announced her plans to block the latest effort to legalize recreational marijuana, known as the Smart & Safe Florida initiative. In a petition to the Florida Supreme Court, the longtime ally of Gov. Ron DeSantis says she believes the ballot language does not meet the “substantive and technical requirements” in Florida ballot law. Though Moody holds off on laying out her arguments against the measure, she cites a section of the law requiring that bal- lot summaries for public referenda be “clear and unambiguous.” “I believe that the proposed amendment fails to meet the requirements of Section 101.161(1), Fla. Stat., and will present additional argument through briefing at the appropriate time,” reads the filing (attached at the end of this story). For years, Florida cannabis-reform groups have tried — and failed — to legalize marijuana for recreational adult use in the state. One pro- posed ballot initiative by Regulate Florida died in 2019 owing to a lack of signatures; the Florida Supreme Court rejected two ballot proposals for vague or confusing language in 2021. State law requires proposed ballot initiatives to rack up roughly 223,000 voter signatures to qualify for review by the Florida Supreme Court and about 891,000 to get on the ballot. In judi- cial reviews of initiatives, the court evaluates whether a measure satisfies clarity requirements and the single-subject rule, which ensures that an initiative is centered on one issue. Earlier this year, the Smart & Safe ballot initia- tive officially made its way toward the state’s highest court after garnering enough signatures for judicial review. According to the state’s Divi- sion of Elections, the initiative has 786,000 sig- natures on file — meaning it needs approximately 105,000 more signatures to be logged in order to qualify for the ballot. On May 10, Trulieve claimed that Smart & Safe Florida had surpassed that threshold in raw sig- natures. The company, which has poured tens of mil- lions of dollars into the initiative, estimates that Florida will become a $6 billion-a-year marijuana market if recreational weed is legalized. Although critics have taken issue with the proposal’s lack of a provision to allow Floridians to grow their own marijuana, proponents say that keeping the measure simple is the best strategy to move the ball on legalization in the state. Cannabis law attorney Sally Kent Peebles previously told New Times that unlike past at- tempts, this initiative was crafted using straight- forward, bare-bones language in order to avoid violating the single-subject and clarity rules. “This time around they’ve got the benefit of seeing what the Supreme Court really had issues with,” Kent Peebles said. “And so they made it incredibly simple.” In a recent statement to Politico, Smart & Safe Florida said it “respectfully disagrees” with Moody’s stance and looks forward to arguments before the state’s highest court. A spokesperson for Trulieve didn’t immedi- ately respond to New Times’ request for com- ment. The company is by far the largest medical marijuana operator in the state, with more than twice as many dispensaries as Curaleaf, its nearest competitor as measured by volume of flower sold. Floridians legalized medical marijuana through a ballot initiative in November 2016, with 71 percent of voters supporting the mea- sure, which far surpassed the 60 percent super- majority it needed to pass. [email protected] GET MORE NEWS & COMMENTARY AT MIAMINEWTIMES.COM/NEWS “YOUNG READERS ACROSS THE NATION DESERVE A COMPLETE AND HONEST EDUCATION.” Milo Imagines the World by Newberry Medal winner Matt de la Peña was challenged for simply containing gay characters.
