Copyright Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
A federal judge ruled Monday that books banned from military schools need to go back on the shelves. U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles granted a preliminary injunction in favor of students from five schools on military bases around the world. The injunction and broader lawsuit, filed in the spring in Virginia’s Eastern District, challenged the removal of books designated by the Trump administration as “divisive equity ideology” under executive orders signed in the early days of his second term. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the Department of Defense Education Activity to take some books off the shelves and remove curricula that fell under the administration’s banned classifications, including “gender ideology” and racism. The DoDEA is a federal school system based in Alexandria, Va. that serves the children of active duty and defense department civilian employees. Matt Callahan, senior supervising attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, called the ruling “very encouraging.” “It’s clear that the government officials here overstepped the law in removing these books and curriculum,” said Callahan. “By requiring them to be put back during the pendency of the case, the court is ensuring that these students still have access to a proper education while the case plays out.” Giles noted in her ruling that at least one of the plaintiffs, a student referred to as L.K.3, had suffered personal harm from the book removals. While an eighth-grader at Edgren Middle High School on Misawa Air Base in Japan, L.K.3 unsuccessfully attempted to check out four banned books: “A Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood, “The Giver” by Lois Lowry, “Nineteen Eighty-Four” by George Orwell and “Ground Zero” by Alan Gratz. The child claimed that they were reprimanded for seeking the books. “It is glaring to this court that an adult scolding a middle schooler for her choice of books would be especially ‘chilling’ and injurious to the student’s First Amendment rights,” Giles wrote. Twelve military families living in Virginia, Kentucky, Italy and Japan with children ranging from pre-K to 11th grade are represented in the suit. The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Kentucky and the ACLU of Virginia wrote in its complaint that the books had been removed from the base school libraries and lessons “with no regard to how canonical, awardwinning, or age-appropriate the material might be.” Giles ordered that the military stop removing the books from its schools and must restore the books and curricula. “We are pleased to see the court agrees with our clients,” Corey Shapiro, legal director for the ACLU of Kentucky, said in a statement. “Removing books from school libraries just because this administration doesn’t like the content is censorship, plain and simple.” The DoDEA operates 161 schools across 11 countries, seven states, Guam and Puerto Rico. Monday’s ruling applies only to the five schools attended by the plaintiffs, but Callahan says that the court’s order could have implications for all schools that are federally funded or run by state governments. “We’ve seen throughout Virginia a number of school districts attempting book bans of materials that they dislike for political reasons. The holding in this case suggests that many of those book bans are themselves unconstitutional and are vulnerable to legal action,” Callahan said.
