opinion | This PTA mom is suing her school district for banning books

Lindsay Durtschi, a member of the PTA in bright red Escambia County, Florida, knows that being a public face in the fight against book bans can make her life difficult, but she’s made peace with it. “I don’t want my business to suffer,” the optometrist and mother of elementary school girls told me. “I don’t want my kids to be bullied.” She is afraid that her family could be threatened. “But if that eventually happens, I’ll tell everyone. I’m not one to keep my mouth shut.”

Durtschi is part of a landmark lawsuit filed Wednesday against the Escambia County School District and the Escambia County School Board for their extensive censorship of school libraries. In addition to Durtschi and another parent from Escambia County, the plaintiffs include the free speech organization PEN America, Penguin Random House and a group of authors of children’s and youth books. The lawsuit seeks to have Escambia’s book restrictions declared unconstitutional because they target specific points of view and because they infringe on students’ rights to receive information. Given the frenzy of book bans we’re now seeing across the country – The Washington Post reported to which librarians can be sent in several states jail for giving the wrong books to children – the outcome will have national implications.

The local school board’s actions, said Suzanne Nossel, the head of PEN America, are “an emblematic and egregious example of the pattern we’ve documented across the country in an escalation of book removals and targeting of specific stories.” involving people. of color and LGBTQ authors and stories.”

What I find most fascinating about the lawsuit, however, is the glimpse it offers of how the political dynamics at the national and state levels allow the most zealous members of a community to impose their will on everyone else.

Much of the impetus for book restrictions in Escambia came from one person: a high school English teacher named Vicki Baggett. Last May, Baggett went after “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” a coming-of-age young adult novel published in 1999 that high school students could choose to read for a class assignment. She quoted, among others the book’s “descriptions of extremely sexual content”. But a school panel voted 4 to 3 to keep the book, so Baggett called in an assistant superintendent. The assistant superintendent convened another committee, which included Durtschi. That committee also voted to let students choose to read the book, so Baggett went to the school board. (Baggett did not respond to an email requesting comment. A district spokesperson previously told The New York Times it cannot comment on pending litigation.)

Meanwhile, Baggett expanded her crusade and prepared one list of the 116 books she wanted removed from school libraries, including “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, “The House of Spirits” by Isabel Allende and, in elementary schools, “Draw Me a Star” by Eric Carle, author of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar’, because it has a picture of a naked man and woman on it. “When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball,” a book about how the famed black sprinter overcame polio to win gold in the Olympics, made the list for his descriptions of the racism Rudolph faced as a child in segregated Tennessee. Baggett, who told the journalist Judd Legum that she is a member of the neo-Confederate group Daughters of the Confederacy accused the book of “race-baiting.”

According to the lawsuit, Baggett found an ally in then-CEO Kevin Adams. Adams told a local news site whose superintendent he had asked to quarantine or remove the offending books from circulation, short-circuiting the review process. This appears to go against the advice of the school board’s own general counsel, who issued a statement at the time saying that while the board has the authority to remove books, “it cannot do so simply because it disagrees with the message of a book”. or it offends an individual’s personal morality.”

Nevertheless, the books were placed in a restricted area of ​​the libraries and could only be accessed with parental permission, pending review by committees formed to evaluate each title. Eventually, this policy was changed so that only books accused of being harmful to minors or in violation of the Parental Rights in Education Act—often known as the Don’t Say Gay Law—were seized. But that was still a lot of books: While the law was written to apply to classroom teaching, the presence of gay or transsexual characters was enough to get a work out of a library. One book taken out of primary school was “And Tango Makes Three,” a picture book based on the true story of two male penguins at Central Park Zoo raising a chick together, which one of Durtschi’s daughters had particularly enjoyed. The board eventually voted to permanently remove it.

Durtschi does not blame Baggett for what is happening at her children’s school. “The person to blame for this is Ron DeSantis,” she told me. After all, it is DeSantis who has put the war on wakefulness, particularly in schools, at the center of his political agenda.

“I was probably five feet away from Governor DeSantis today, who made it very clear to me how he felt about some of these things,” Adams said at the school board meeting where “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” was banned. “I wondered why so many students had mental health problems and disciplinary problems, bad disciplinary problems. I believe they are poisoned by what they hear and read.”

DeSantis has taken the legitimate concern for student welfare in the aftermath of the pandemic and turned it into a growing moral panic. “Now these voices – you know, Daughters of the Confederacy, Moms for Liberty” – a right-wing women’s group that has been at the forefront of banning books across the country – “they have now been allowed to take their hatred to the mainstream.” bring,” Durtschi said.

Durtschi, who grew up in an evangelical family and attended a Christian school, said she doesn’t want to “devalue” the feelings of people who are concerned about what children encounter in school. But she is also furious about what her own children are now learning. “We’re going to teach you how to tie a tourniquet in the case of an active shooter, but they can’t know that men and women might not be the only option for a marriage license?” she said incredulously. “I’m fine with some hating me for resisting it,” she added.

At a meeting the day before the lawsuit was filed, the Escambia County School Board voted to abruptly fire the county superintendent, Tim Smith, in part because, acting on the advice of the school’s general counsel, he had no books deleted. Before Smith left, he offered the board some parting words. “Something bad is going on here,” he said. “There’s something toxic here.” And it doesn’t only exist in Escambia, which is why this lawsuit is important.