A school district in northeast Florida must put back in libraries three dozen books as part of a settlement reached Thursday with students and parents who sued over what they said was an unlawful decision to limit access to dozens of titles containing LGBTQ+ content.
Under the agreement the School Board of Nassau County must restore access to three dozen titles including “And Tango Makes Three,” a children’s picture book based on a true story about two male penguins that raised a chick together at New York’s Central Park Zoo. Authors Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson were plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the district, which is about 35 miles (about 60 kilometers) northeast of Jacksonville along the Georgia border.
The suit was one of several challenges to book bans since state lawmakers last year passed, and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law, legislation making it easier to challenge educational materials that opponents consider pornographic and obscene. Last month six major publishers and several well-known authors filed a federal lawsuit in Orlando arguing that some provisions of the law violate the First Amendment rights of publishers, authors and students.
The first amendment doesn’t stop politicians from acting in bad faith. There’s no consequences for passing bad laws. Politicians often use this tactic to make headlines and make their opponents waste resources. The only thing politicians have to worry about is getting elected again.
We need to have politicians automatically suspended when they sign a bill that is found unconstitutional. The politician should only be able to be re-instated by a majority popular vote, to ensure the people still believe that representative acts in the good faith of the people.
How many times are voters going to turn up to defend these antics. Are you going to show up every other weekend to revote in Desantis? Or let him be removed from office for trampling on the rights of the people and wasting your time and taxpayer money.
The issue is that some laws make complete sense, but you can have an activist judge or the SC declare it unconstitutional. Legislatures are elected and they can’t be expected to know how a law can be interpreted.
Even something as simple as a noise ordinance could be considered a first amendment violation in certain cases.
I live in Illinois, they passed an assault weapons ban last year. Of course the gun people claimed it was unconstitutional because of the 2nd amendment. It’s not but someone tried to make that argument and there’s a non-zero number of judges who would agree with them.