The Florida Legislature supports limits to book challenges

Share
banned books, First Amendment
Banned books. Displayed at The Hive St. Pete. By Seán Kinane/WMNF News (Aug. 2023)

©2024 The News Service of Florida

The Florida House on Thursday gave final approval to an education bill that includes seeking to limit school library book objections from people who don’t have children in schools.

The bill (HB 1285) says that a “resident of the county who is not the parent or guardian of a student with access to school district materials may not object to more than one material per month.”

The House passed a version of the bill in February that sought to assess $100 “processing” fees for unsuccessful book objections by certain people.

The Senate, however, changed the bill to limit people without children in schools to one challenge per month. House members on Thursday accepted the change and voted 84-29 to approve the revised bill, putting it in a position to go to Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The bill comes after the Legislature and DeSantis since 2022 have approved measures that increased scrutiny of school-library books and classroom materials.

DeSantis last month issued a statement saying that he had called on the Legislature to take steps to curb “frivolous” book challenges, adding that some Floridians “abused” the process of filing objections.

Democrats have long opposed easing the process for objecting to books, likening books being pulled from library shelves to book bans.

Leave a Reply

  • (will not be published)

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

You may also like

Genetics and Your Health

MidPoint explored genetics testing and the challenges of receiving a...

The Scoop: Thurs. Nov. 21st, 2024, Tampa Bay and Florida headlines by WMNF

Stay updated on the St. Petersburg city leaders' vote on...

City of Zephyrhills and FEMA will hold a hurricane assistance meeting Friday

There will be a town hall-style meeting in Zephyrhills regarding...

Florida Capitol
Here are the 2025-26 Florida Senate committee leaders

Senate President, Republican Ben Albritton, named lawmakers who will lead...

Ways to listen

WMNF is listener-supported. That means we don't advertise like a commercial station, and we're not part of a university.

Ways to support

WMNF volunteers have fun providing a variety of needed services to keep your community radio station alive and kickin'.

Follow us on Instagram

Morning Energy
Player position: