Two students are behind a class action lawsuit against a school district in Missouri, after several books were removed from school libraries.
The board of the Wentzville school district in St. Louis voted in January to remove Nobel laureate Toni Morrisons book «The Bluest Eye» from the school libraries. The arguments are that it contains descriptions of sex, violence, rape and incest.
Several other books were also temporarily removed while they are being reviewed, writes NPR St. Louis.
There has been one lately wave of book bans in schools in several states in the United States. Several of the books that have been removed from the school library and curriculum are about the oppression of minorities, racism and LGBTQ +.
–The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Missouri is conducting the federal trial on behalf of the underage students and their families.
They claim students have “a constitutional right to be released from public administration aimed at suppressing the thoughts and views expressed in the banned books.”
The board of the school district states that they are aware of the lawsuit, but do not want to comment on it.
What do you think about book bans in schools?
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In November, NPR St. Louis reviewed the books that were then in danger of being removed. They found that two-thirds of the works were written by non-white or LGBTQ + authors. Since then, there have been several formal proposals to remove books in local school districts.
– This is not just about any book ban, which comes from time to time, where the school district disagrees with the book’s ideology. Here, Wentzville has purposefully gone after and removed books that are from the point of view or point of view of minorities, says ACLU leader in Missouri Tony Rothert.
–According to NPR, the process is that anyone can request that a book be removed from school libraries. Then the school district must make a formal review. While many local circles leave the books while they are being reviewed, the Wentzville district removes all books that are being reviewed.
ACLU believes this makes censorship far too easy. according to Time There was a similar lawsuit in Texas in 2000 after two books about gays and lesbians (“Heather Has Two Mommies” and “Daddy’s Roommate”) were removed from a public library in Wichita Falls. The judge concluded that the law that allowed this was unconstitutional.
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