Florida Censorship Attempts

We will post weekly updates to our Florida censorship attempts by title that you can view by clicking this link*. 

On September 30, 2025 Judge Winsor of Florida's Northern District Federal Court ruled in favor of the Escambia County School District regarding the removal of the book And Tango Makes Three. In his ruling, which determined that the board can choose which ideas belong on the shelf, Judge Winsor stated that patrons and authors lack the First Amendment rights to receive and share ideas/speech in our publicly funded libraries. This ruling ignored Judge Mendoza's entirely along with decades of court precedent affirming patrons' First Amendment rights in the library, and now both have been appealed to the 11th Circuit Court. 

On August 13, 2025 Judge Mendoza of Florida's Middle District Federal Court ruled in favor of students' First Amendment rights and noted that books have been removed in the state of Florida in a way that ignores the Supreme Court standard to test the materials for obscenity as it relates to minors. You can read more about that here. Districts have so far expressed apprehension about returning books to shelves due to the state's appeal to the 11th Circuit. We will do our best to monitor the current status of all books via PRR, but it will be difficult to get an accurate picture over the next few weeks and months unless district leaders make public statements about what staff and educators have been directed to do. In October, Orange County received its first objection since the ruling. The nonfiction book about animal reproduction, Do Animals Fall in Love? was pulled from middle school shelves and faces a District Level Review Committee because the objector noted that the book "depicts or describes sexual conduct." The response by the district to the objection seems to ignore Judge Mendoza's ruling in favor of following the very provisions in HB 1069 that were ruled unconstitutional.

On June 4, 2025 (approx 2.5 hours into the meeting), the Superintendent of Hillsborough was called before the state board of education. What transpired will have huge impacts on our school libraries all around the state. 55 titles were banned by state officials that day. Additionally, they called for mass firings, threatened felony charges, and decried the public review process. We will be tracking the status of these titles across the state, but more concerning is the soft censorship in curation decisions that will happen going forward that will be almost impossible to track. You can read more about this here in addition to learning what you can do to help combat soft censorship as a result of this incident in your district.

Here's some info to help understand the report:

1. Due to the shifts in trends in the state, we no longer distinguish between special interest groups. They are all working together and sharing forms and lists.
2. You will see "State" referenced as the instigator now too. This means that either the district specifically referenced reviewing the state list as prompting the review, or the district explicitly referenced state guidance, memos, or statements about specific titles or a clause in the law forcing removal without going through the objection process. 
3. We no longer distinguish between school, district, and final reviews. During the review process, there are decisions made, overturned, and made again and sometimes it is too difficult to properly distinguish between whether a decision is actually made at the school level or prompted by the district. Please note, decisions to weed or deselect could be local school decisions in response for a call to review a title. This means that it may not be a decision that impacts the entire district.
4. Informal reviews are no longer called out. Instead, you will notice a status of "No Impact" or "Unclear" - meaning that the district has either not taken action yet on the informal call for review or they have decided to take the books under review, but have not put it in writing that the books MUST be removed/restricted during this time.
5. We tried to simplify the categories for restriction and removal. Here's generally how you can interpret them:
   1. Removed - decision was to remove the title permanently
   2. Deselected - decision was to remove the title permanently due to content through an internal review process, usually this is school-specific and not a district-wide order to remove
   3. Weeded - decision was to remove the title at this time due to condition, not necessarily content (school-based decisions only)
   4. Age/Grade + Parent Restricted - combo of following two items
   5. Age/Grade Restricted - decision to age up a title beyond the recommended age group, can result in title being removed from a schools
   6. Permission Required - decision to require additional parent permission to access the title
   7. Location Restricted - decision to limit a title to advanced classrooms only (no general media center access) or to restrict the title from certain grades, classrooms, or curriculum 
   8. Warning - a label is added either in the library catalog or in a sticker placed on the physical book
   9. Retained - the title remains available to the same audience it had prior to the review
   10. Shadow Banned - the title's availability is being hidden or diminished in a less than transparent way, but it's likely still available if you know how or where to look
   11. Pending - the district has put in writing that they are in the process of making a decision about the title
   12. Withdrawn - whatever factor that prompted the review has pulled back on the request 

*DO NOT SAVE THIS LINK. The document is dated in the title and the link will change weekly. Come back to this page for updates.

If you have censorship attempts to report in Florida or see errors on our spreadsheet, please complete our tip form. 

Note: We create and manage this list based on public records, what is posted on district sites, and verified statements made by district officials. Some restrictions and removals are temporary or reversed through appeals and public outcry, and we do our best to keep our records up-to-date. If you see something in conflict with what you know or believe to be true about your district, please reach out to [email protected].

In 2023, districts were asked to further scrutinize their classroom libraries, and the number of titles that are personally owned by our teachers but no longer available to our students cannot be properly accounted for at this time. We are working on obtaining records from the districts in an attempt to paint an accurate picture, but have decided not to include this data in our tracking unless a specific order is made to reject the titles for classroom libraries.