A school district in Georgia may face more than $107,500 in legal fees after censoring parents from reading certain books at school board meetings, as reported by Fox News. The controversy arose during a meeting last year after a mother read excerpts from a novel from the school library that she deemed sexually explicit and inappropriate for students.
The board stopped her and subsequently banned her from future meetings. The mother sued the board in a federal lawsuit after claiming her First Amendment rights were violated — and a federal judge partially agreed.
Following the court’s decision however, the Forsyth Coalition for Education, a nonpartisan group of parents, students, teachers and education say they stand against attempts to “parent other people’s children,” as reported by WXIA-TV.
“We have professional media specialists in our schools who make our children’s well-being and intellectual development their top priority. Reading is a way for students to connect with voices and experiences that may open up the wider world for them or help them understand their own thoughts and feelings. Censorship puts a stop to all of that and allows those with an ideological agenda to hijack our students’ education. While it’s true that not every book is appropriate for every child at every age, a book that is beyond the capacity of a fifth-grader may be a valuable experience for an eleventh-grader. With their years of education, we trust the professionals, not the noisy minority with an agenda, to make that determination,” the group shared in a statement.
According to a report from Pen America, more than 1,600 unique book titles were banned in the 2021-2022 school year across the country. In contrast, the American Library Association tracked 533 challenges to library school and university materials in 2019 and 2020 combined. Among the most banned books are “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George Johnson, and “Out of Darkness” by Ashley Pérez.
