The county settled a federal lawsuit with a group of parents, students and the authors of a removed book.

By Andrew Atterbury

09/12/2024 07:00 PM EDT

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — A northeast Florida school district this week agreed to restore 36 books that were challenged and previously pulled from campus libraries in a settlement of a federal lawsuit fighting how local officials carried out the state’s policies for shielding students from obscene content.

The settlement reached by Nassau County school officials and a group of parents, students and the authors of the removed children’s book “And Tango Makes Three” marks a significant twist in the ongoing legal battles surrounding Florida’s K-12 book restrictions, which have been derided as “book bans” by opponents. Under the agreement, that book and others such as the “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and the “The Clan of the Cave Bear” by Jean Auel will once again be available to students after being removed last year.

The deal was heralded as a “major” development Thursday by the law firm Selendy Gay PLLC, which is representing the group including “And Tango Makes Three” authors Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson.

“This settlement — a watershed moment in the ongoing battle against book censorship in the United States — significantly restores access to important works that were unlawfully removed from the shelves of Nassau County, Florida’s public school libraries,” Lauren Zimmerman, a lawyer with Selendy Gay, said in a statement.

School officials in Nassau County did not immediately respond to a request for comment surrounding the settlement. The district claimed to have removed Tango due to “lack of circulation” and other works due to impermissible sexual content. The lawsuit, though, contends that the school board did not publicly vet these titles, and the district has agreed to form a review committee to weigh some of the books.

As part of the agreement, Nassau school officials acknowledged that “And Tango Makes Three” — a kids book about a penguin family at New York’s Central Park Zoo with two dads — contains no “obscene” material and is suitable for students of all ages. This book and the authors are also plaintiffs in a separate lawsuit challenging how the work was removed from school libraries in Escambia County, a case that remains ongoing.

These federal lawsuits target how local school boards are enacting policies crafted by Republican lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration — specifically how parents and others can raise objections about potentially inappropriate books at schools.

State Republicans passed legislation in recent years opening the door for school book challenges and have since expanded those rules by requiring officials to yank contested titles within five days of being flagged for being pornographic, harmful to minors or depicting sexual activity, a shift opponents equate to censoring literary works, particularly those that had LGBTQ+ themes. The state is now trying to limit local book challenges after schools were flooded with hundreds of objections, even for works like Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

The Nassau settlement additionally stipulates that local schools will make the book “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky available to high school students, as well as bring back a dozen other books for students ages 18 and older or with parental consent. That list includes “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer and “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini.