Sneads High School is in Jackson County in the Panhandle. (Photo by Jay Waagmeester/Florida Phoenix)
Lawmakers advanced a measure Tuesday that Democrats warned would further restrict the material Florida students may consume.
Senators in the Criminal Justice Committee approved on a party-line vote a definition of what school boards should consider “harmful to minors,” building on a 2023 law granting school boards authority to remove books parents challenge as being “pornographic.”
SB 1692, sponsored by Republican Sen. Stan McClain, he said, is meant to clarify the law he led two years ago in the House.
“I think that we’re bifurcating here, so it’s more clear as to what we’re actually talking about so that school districts can make a decision. If it is [in violation of the proposed law], if it’s that, then it’s considered pornographic and it’s considered harmful to minors,” McClain said.
The definition targets media “depicting nudity, sexual conduct, or sexual excitement when it predominantly appeals to prurient, shameful, or morbid interest and is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material or conduct for minors.”
Book publishers filed a lawsuit against the state last year, calling the legal definition of “pornographic” and content that “describes sexual conduct” as unconstitutional and overbroad.
The proposal lets the state allow certain works for “specific educational purposes” and tasks it with enforcing district-level compliance, including withholding state funds from schools.
Limiting the classics?
The 2023 law allowed for books to stay on shelves that were considered to have literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. McClain’s proposal would prevent school boards from keeping books based on those values if they contain “harmful” content.
“I thought we were done with this, I thought we were done with the culture wars,” Democratic Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith said.
“I’m not sure how this helps anyone, I’m not sure how this is going to help us deal with rising costs on all Floridians,” Smith said. “I can think of how it can hurt someone, because indoctrination can be very hurtful. I’m saying about indoctrination into ignorance, which is what censorship brings.”
Smith argued the new bill would limit schools’ ability to maintain classical works in their collections.
“The impact here is that book bans are going to get worse, censorship is going to be worse, censorship of actually the classics, which we’ve seen across the state of Florida, because Florida is now Number One in the country for banning books in our public schools,” Smith said.
He added that the bill gives “the far Right even more weapons to continue to make these school board meetings and the book banning as divisive as we possibly can.”
Smith and the two other Democrats on the committee, Jason Pizzo and Mack Bernard, voted against the bill.
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What is graphic?
Republican Sens. Clay Yarborough and Jennifer Bradley acknowledged to the committee that bad-faith objections have been multiplied since 2023. A 2024 law attempts to curb such abuse, limiting book objections by non-parent citizens.
Moms for Liberty, Florida Family Voice, and Florida Citizens Alliance were among those voicing support for McClain’s measure.
A representative from Moms for Liberty argued that recognizing literary, artistic, and political merit was a “loophole” that “is being exploited.”
“If I took a picture with my phone of what is in some of these books and I transmitted it via text to a fourth grader sitting across the hall from the library in Mrs. McGillicuddy’s math class, I would go to federal prison, but we’re supposed to let students sit undisturbed in a classroom, in a library, or at home with a book they’ve checked out from their school taxpayer-funded library and consume all of this stuff,” Yarborough said.
Pizzo wondered whether the Bible contains graphic content.
McClain said he would restrict the ages he would let his children read certain passages of the Bible.
“The biggest thing we should be doing in life is trying make sure that our children are growing up with the most knowledge that they can have without a lot of other things in their mind,” McClain said.
Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, said last year that media specialists do not feel they’ve received clear guidance on restricting books.
The bill has been assigned to the Education Pre-k-12 and Rules committees, too.
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