A Georgia school district may have violated the civil rights of its students by removing certain books from its libraries, creating a “hostile environment” for students based on race, gender or national origin, the U.S. Department of Education said.
The department’s Office for Civil Rights was investigating whether Forsyth County Schools had violated student rights and announced a settlement Friday.
In a letter to the Superintendent of Forsyth County Schools, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights said that in the fall of 2021, the district began receiving complaints from some parents that material in the library was sexually explicit or contained LGBTQ content. The district eventually responded by removing some books. The debate over the removal of the books left some students feeling targeted, said Catherine E. Lhamon, the education department’s assistant secretary for civil rights.
The district took steps to “try to adhere to a non-discriminatory policy,” she said, but those steps were not enough to address the hostile environment.
“When they removed books, there was a lot of discussion in the school community about which books would be removed, and it seemed that the books that were removed were by and about LGBTQI+ people, and by and about people of color,” says Ms Lhamon . said. “Students heard that message and felt unsafe in response.”
The Department of Education said the district agreed to take certain steps as part of the settlement, including conducting a survey of students about their school environment and subjecting them to ongoing surveillance by the Office for Civil Rights.
In a statement, Jennifer Caracciolo, a spokeswoman for Forsyth County Schools, said the district is “committed to providing a safe, connected and thriving community for all students and their families. With the implementation of the OCR’s recommendations, we will continue our advancing mission to provide unparalleled education for everyone to succeed.”
The involvement of the Georgia Department of Education marks an important step in the Biden administration’s efforts to address book removals, highlighting the extent to which book bans have become a powerful national political issue. Recently, President Biden referred to book bans as a new threat to Americans’ freedoms in a video announcing his campaign for a second term.
“As we see this issue of book removal and book banning growing across the country, it is important to remind every school community that they have a federal civil rights obligation not to exploit a hostile environment based on race or gender. gender of their students,” Ms. Lhamon said. “We are willing to enforce those laws.”
Over the past two years, free speech organizations have observed a spike in book bans across the country, fueled by a growing and organized movement to remove books on certain subjects from school districts and libraries.
PEN America has counted more than 4,000 book removal cases since it began tracking bans in July 2021. A recent report from the American Library Association shows that efforts to ban books have almost doubled in 2022 from the previous year and reached the highest level the organization has seen since it began collecting data on book bans more than 20 years ago. Most of the targeted books are titles with LGBTQ themes and characters, or works that deal with race and racism, both organizations found.
Opponents of book removals have raised the alarm not only about the surge in bans, but also about the methods used to challenge books. While in the past book challenges often came from concerned parents, many now come from the organized efforts of conservative groups such as Moms for Liberty and Utah Parents United, or from state legislation that has made it easier to get titles removed.
In recent months, a countermovement of opponents of book removals has started to take shape. In Llano, Texas, a federal judge ordered the county to return 17 banned books to the library after a group of residents sued the county and library officials, arguing that the book removals were unconstitutional and violated citizens’ rights to the first amendment.
In Illinois, the legislature passed legislation that would include subsidies to libraries that remove books or refuse to enforce policies against book bans.
Last week, PEN America and publisher Penguin Random House, along with a group of authors and parents, filed a lawsuit against a Florida school board and district over book removal.
“Children in a democracy should not be taught that books are dangerous,” Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, said in a statement about the lawsuit. “Freedom to read is guaranteed by the Constitution.”
