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Florida school district pulls dictionaries and encyclopedias as part of “inappropriate” content review
One school district in Florida is looking to extend the state’s book ban to an unexpected genre: dictionaries. According to a list obtained and published by the nonprofit PEN America, the Escambia County school district has included five dictionaries, eight encyclopedias and “The Guinness Book of World Records,” in its list of more than 1,600 books that could soon be banned.
The list of books was initially obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project, a nonprofit that was started in 2021 when Florida started to initiate book bans in schools across the state. The district has a list of books that have been formally challenged on its website as well, which shows that several books have already been restricted and removed, including Alice Sebold’s “Lucky,” Sapphire’s “Push,” and Kyle Luckoff’s “When Aidan Became a Brother,” a picture book that tells the story of a young transgender boy and his new role as a big brother.
According to PEN America, the list consists of more than 1,600 books “banned pending investigation in December 2023.” Among titles on the list are: John T. Alexander’s “Catherine the Great: Life and Legend,” “Speak: The Graphic Novel,” Carl Hiaasen’s “Hoot,” and Anne Frank’s “Diary of a Young Girl.”
Also on the list are “Merriam-Webster’s Elementary Dictionary,” “The Bible Book,” “The World Book Encyclopedia of People and Places,” “Guinness Book of World Records, 2000,” “Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus for Students,” and “The American Heritage Children’s Dictionary.”
CBS News reached out to the Escambia school district for comment, but did not hear back prior to publication. In a statement to The Messenger, a spokesperson for the district said that the books “have not been banned or removed from the school district.”
“Rather, they have simply been pulled for further review to ensure compliance with the new legislation,” the spokesperson said. “To suggest otherwise is disingenuous and counterproductive.”
The Messenger obtained a spreadsheet of the books under review. The list, which shows that fewer than 70 have so far been analyzed, indicates that the books are being reviewed for their compliance to HB 1069 – a bill approved by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year that, along with requiring schools to teach that “reproductive roles are binary, stable and unchangeable” and limiting education regarding sexual health, also bans schools from having books that depict or describe “sexual conduct” or “is inappropriate for the grade level and age group for which the material is used.”
According to a training presentation that was obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project and shared with CBS News, sexual conduct includes sexual intercourse, sexual bestiality and sexual battery, among other things. “Sexually oriented material,” which is also banned, includes any depiction of sexual activity, uncovered human genitals, the presentation says.
Any book that is deemed questionable based on this law “must be removed within 5 school days of receipt of the objection,” and cannot be returned to shelves until it is reviewed, the bill says.
In August, Escambia Superintendent Keith Leonard told the Pensacola News Journal that the district was making “great strides” to adhere to HB 1069, which went into effect last July. According to the training presentation, the district started reviewing books last July and hopes to have all pulled books reviewed with a formal decision by May 2024.
“Florida’s new censorship landscape under laws like HB 1069 is robbing students of all kinds of important books and resources, such as those on major topics like the Holocaust, and shockingly, the Dictionary,” Kasey Meehan, program director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, said. “This is a massive overextension of the language of the law, which mandates against ‘sexual conduct,’ and the school must return the titles immediately.”
Stephana Ferrell, director of research and insight at the Florida Freedom to Read Project, told CBS News that within the last five months, fewer than 100 titles have been reviewed by the district.
“We applaud them for doing their due diligence to read and discuss every book before making a decision to permanently ban it from schools, but they need more dedicated, trained staff to help support this effort,” Ferrell said. “Most of these books, though pulled temporarily as the district has stated, will never be accessible in the school library for most current secondary students.”
Ferrell added that the guidance from the state’s Department of Education is “irresponsible.”
“What’s happening in Escambia is ridiculous, but it is also happening in many other districts to varying degrees,” Ferrell said. “The language in the law is bad. … [The Florida Department of Education] are the ones with the power to fix this. Until then, districts will continue to ‘err on the side of caution’ as they have been told to do at the expense of our children’s education.”
PEN America has joined publisher Penguin Random House, authors and parents in filing a lawsuit against the district over its removals. On Wednesday, a judge ruled that the lawsuit can move forward, saying it has standing under the First Amendment, the Associated Press reported.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill Saturday that would have required new cars to beep at drivers if they exceed the speed limit in an effort to reduce traffic deaths.
California would have become the first to require such systems for all new cars, trucks and buses sold in the state starting in 2030. The bill would have mandated that vehicles beep at drivers when they exceed the speed limit by at least 10 mph.
The European Union has passed similar legislation to encourage drivers to slow down. California’s proposal would have provided exceptions for emergency vehicles, motorcycles and motorized scooters.
In explaining his veto, Newsom said federal law already dictates vehicle safety standards and adding California-specific requirements would create a patchwork of regulations.
The National Highway Traffic Safety “is also actively evaluating intelligent speed assistance systems, and imposing state-level mandates at this time risks disrupting these ongoing federal assessments,” the Democratic governor said.
Opponents, including automotive groups and the state Chamber of Commerce, said such regulations should be decided by the federal government, which earlier this year established new requirements for automatic emergency braking to curb traffic deaths. Republican lawmakers also said the proposal could make cars more expensive and distract drivers.
The legislation would have likely impacted all new car sales in the U.S., since the California market is so large that car manufacturers would likely just make all of their vehicles comply.
California often throws that weight around to influence national and even international policy. The state has set its own emission standards for cars for decades, rules that more than a dozen other states have also adopted. And when California announced it would eventually ban the sale of new gas-powered cars, major automakers soon followed with their own announcement to phase out fossil-fuel vehicles.
Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, who sponsored the bill, called the veto disappointing and a setback for street safety.
“California should have led on this crisis as Wisconsin did in passing the first seatbelt mandate in 1961,” Wiener said in a statement. “Instead, this veto resigns Californians to a completely unnecessary risk of fatality.”
The speeding alert technology, known as intelligent speed assistance, uses GPS to compare a vehicle’s pace with a dataset of posted limits. If the car is at least 10 mph over, the system emits a single, brief, visual and audio alert.
The proposal would have required the state to maintain a list of posted speed limits, and it’s likely that those would not include local roads or recent changes in speed limits, resulting in conflicts.
The technology has been used in the U.S. and Europe for years. Starting in July, the European Union will require all new cars to have the technology, although drivers would be able to turn it off. At least 18 manufacturers including Ford, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Nissan, have already offered some form of speed limiters on some models sold in America, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 10% of all car crashes reported to police in 2021 were related to speeding. This was especially a problem in California, where 35% of traffic fatalities were speeding-related — the second highest in the country, according to a legislative analysis of the proposal.
Last year the NTSB recommended federal regulators require all new cars to alert drivers when they speed. Their recommendation came after a crash in January 2022, when a man with a history of speeding violations ran a red light at more than 100 mph and struck a minivan, killing himself and eight other people.
