6 November 16-22, 2023 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | culture | Night+Day | news | letters | coNteNts | KAREN KRUSADE Moms for Liberty member demands Florida librarians’ arrest. BY ALEX DELUCA A s self-described paren- tal rights activists con- tinue on their nationwide crusade to ban books, and Florida leads the way in more ways than one, some local Florida police have opened full-blown criminal investigations into complaints of school libraries supposedly breaking state law. Others, it appears, have not taken the grievances as seriously. In body-camera footage obtained by jour- nalist Judd Legum of Popular Information, a member of the far-right parent activist group Moms for Liberty is shown standing in the lobby of the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Of- fice and demanding a police probe into a local school allegedly retaining a young adult novel with risqué passages. Jennifer Tapley tells of- ficers that a school librarian kept the con- tested literature on the shelves at Jay High School despite complaints about its content. Accompanied by an older man who brought the 512-page book in a large manila envelope, Tapley tells officers that a third-de- gree felony is being committed. “The governor says this is child pornogra- phy,” Tapley says of the book in the October 25 clip. “It’s a serious crime...just as serious as if I handed a Playboy to her right now, right here, in front of you,” she adds, motioning to a young girl who accompanied her on the visit. The video shows Tapley, who is running for a Santa Rosa school board seat in 2024, complaining of content at other local schools, including what she describes as a sexually charged book at Wallace Lake K-8 School. After roughly ten minutes, an officer as- sures Tapley that he understands her con- cerns and will look into them. Body-camera footage shows him stepping outside the lobby and approaching his co-workers next to a squad car. “Now look at this law.... It’s not our thing; it’s a school district thing,” the officer tells an- other cop, who is leaning against the car and sporting a pair of sunglasses. He adds, “They’re saying that a crime has been committed...is being committed in all of these schools.” In response, the bespectacled cop smirks. The book in question is Storm and Fury, a popular young adult novel by Jennifer L. Armentrout that features an 18-year-old main character and a battle between gar- goyles and demons. It includes several pas- sages with sexual themes, including one makeout session that almost escalates to sex. Barnes & Noble recommends the book for readers 14 to 18. While the school dis- trict’s website has a list of challenged books, Legum notes that he did not locate Storm and Fury among them. A new Florida law that recently took effect mandates that school books be age-appropri- ate and approved by a qualified school media specialist. State law has long prohibited adults from distributing “harmful materials” to minors, including obscene and pornographic materials. Violators face a third-degree felony — up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. The state law defines “harmful to minors” as mostly appealing to a “prurient, shameful, or morbid interest” while “patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material or conduct for minors.” “Storm and Fury, a book that is predomi- nantly about fighting demons, is routinely recommended by adults for high school stu- dents,” Legum writes. According to a Santa Rosa County Sher- iff’s Office report obtained by Legum through a public records request, the sher- iff’s office quickly referred Tapley’s report to the Santa Rosa County School District before closing its case. Tapley told deputies she has repeatedly lodged complaints about local school district officials and has a history of conflict with a district head librarian. According to Tapley, the head librarian improperly posted ad- dresses and personal information of Moms for Liberty members on the district website. As previously reported by New Times, Florida was recently named the number one state in the country for school book bans. A report released in September by non- profit organization PEN America found that Florida has outdone Texas when it comes to removing books from public school libraries and classrooms — with more than 40 percent of book bans in the United States this year taking place in the Sunshine State. While the report logged 625 incidents in Texas, 333 in Missouri, and 281 in Utah, it recorded more than 1,400 school book bans in Florida for the 2022-23 school year. The bans occur at the school district level in Florida, where local officials are tasked with fielding a flood of complaints from parents and right-wing activists. (The tally includes cases of books yanked from class- rooms and libraries pending investigation, as well as titles to which student access was restricted.) The spike in the removal of books — many of which are about race, sexuality, sexual ori- entation, and gender identity — comes after the passage of a flurry of new Florida laws such as the Stop WOKE Act, which sought to restrict teaching about systemic racism in schools, and the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” laws, which bar instruction involving gender identity and sexual orientation until ninth grade, extended through high school under a Florida Department of Education rule. While the laws don’t ban specific titles, they’ve opened the door for activists, like those from Moms for Liberty, to lodge book challenges across Florida. HB 1069, a 2023 Florida law cited by Tap- ley in her meeting with deputies, requires public schools to remove a book within five days of receiving a challenge if the challenger claims the book has pornographic or sexual content. The book has to stay out of circula- tion until the challenge is resolved. Summoning Florida police in the school culture wars apparently isn’t a new strategy by members of Moms for Liberty and other far-right activists. In 2021, a Moms for Liberty member filed a complaint with the local sheriff’s office against the Flagler County School District’s display of the queer novel All Boys Aren’t Blue in two high schools and a middle school. At the time, the sheriff said that it was “the school board’s respon- sibility to determine what is in a library” and “their policies frankly are lacking.” And last year in Polk County, a dark- money group reportedly lodged a series of complaints about books to the sheriff, who deemed the material “vile and nasty and in- appropriate” but not pornographic. [email protected] A member of the conservative group Moms for Liberty was incensed that a librarian permitted students to access the novel Storm and Fury. Photo by Kevin Wong/Flickr | METRO | “IT’S A SERIOUS CRIME...JUST AS SERIOUS AS IF I HANDED A PLAYBOY TO HER RIGHT NOW.”
