'State-driven censorship': new wave of book bans hits Florida school districts
‘State-driven censorship’: new wave of book bans hits Florida school districts
Hundreds of titles are being pulled from library and classroom shelves in the Republican-dominated state
Olivia Empson
Sat 16 Aug 2025 10.00 EDT
The Republican-dominated state, which has already had the highest rate of book bans nationwide this year, is continuing to censor reading materials in schools, bowing to external pressures in an effort to avoid conflict and government retaliation.
“This is an ideological campaign to erase LGBTQ+ lives and any honest discussion of sex, stripping libraries of resources and stories,” William Johnson, the director of PEN America’s Florida office, told the Guardian.
“If censorship keeps spreading, silence won’t save us. Floridians must speak out now.”
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The books taken off the school shelves included The Diary of Anne Frank and What Girls Are Made of by Elana K Arnold. None of them were under formal review by the district, and they hadn’t been flagged by local parents as potentially inappropriate. Parents with children in the school system even had the opportunity to opt their children out of a particular reading, without removing them from the class for everyone.
PEN called the board of education’s mass removal in Hillsborough county a “state-driven censorship”, and concluded “it is a calculated effort to consolidate power through fear, to bypass legal precedent, and to silence diverse voices in Florida’s public schools,” in their press release.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/16/florida-new-book-bans
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Law banning school library books ruled ‘overbroad and unconstitutional’
‘Florida has given parents license to object to materials under an ‘I know it when I see it’ approach.’
By: Jay Waagmeester - August 15, 2025 4:56 pm
