Book bans, again. Little Big Brother DeSantis is watching those dangerous government schools and libraries.
DeSantis admin doubles down on school book bans
Douglas Soule USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is doubling down on its position that books can be removed from school libraries solely because the government disagrees with them.
“(We) maintain the position that the removal of material from public school libraries is government speech for which it has the complete discretion and freedom to speak through the removal of speech with which it disapproves,” wrote attorneys for various Gov. Ron DeSantis education appointees in a Thursday court filing.
As revealed by the USA TODAY Network – Florida, the state has made the same argument over the last year to counter lawsuits filed over the local school district removals of books with LGBTQ themes.
In a similar vein, another attorney for DeSantis education appointees recently told a federal appeals court that what public university professors say in classrooms is government speech and therefore can be censored by the state.
The federal lawsuit prompting the latest government speech assertion was filed last month by a trio of public school student mothers who accuse Florida’s top education officials of discriminating against them and others opposed to the surge of book removals seen across the state.
In trying to get that lawsuit thrown out, Florida’s attorneys said that since removals are protected government speech, the public can’t experience “harm or concrete injury” over those removals and therefore can’t sue.
It shows the state is only ramping up arguments that have alarmed First Amendment experts, with some accusing them of being authoritarian. And it marks yet another case in Florida that could have big effects on First Amendment law across the nation.
As mentioned by the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, government speech doctrine is relatively new and “not always precise,” with most of the core cases on it coming in the last couple of decades.
“Under the government speech doctrine, the government has its own rights as speaker, immune from free speech challenges,” the center says on its website. “It can assert its own ideas and messages without being subject to First Amendment claims of viewpoint discrimination.”
While the U.S. Supreme Court has not always ruled in favor of government speech arguments, it said in 2015 that Texas could refuse to allow Confederate flag specialty license plates because they represented government speech. Justices said six years before that a city could refuse to put a monument in a public park for the same reason.
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