The would-be book banners have suffered another defeat in court.
Last week, U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles issued a preliminary injunction ordering the Department of Defense Education Agency (DoDEA), a federal agency that oversees education for the children of active-duty service members by managing schools on military bases, to restore access to hundreds of books that were removed from shelves at the behest of the Trump administration and its Christian Nationalist allies.
The books (and some curricular materials) were removed after two executive orders issued by President Donald Trump in January. One order banned federal agencies from discussing issues such as transgender rights, diversity, equity and inclusion; the other, according to PEN America, bars DoDEA schools from promoting “un-American” ideas and any material that suggested “that America’s founding documents are racist or sexist.”
In light of the orders, DoDEA officials began purging books from school libraries. The book-removal process, Giles noted in an earlier order, was “inconsistent and opaque.” During the course of the litigation, which was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf a several military families, DoDEA was compelled to issue the full list of 596 books it had banned, most of which deal with racial issues, feminism and LGBTQ+ themes. (The full list can be read on PEN’s website.)
But some titles fell to censors even though they were not on the original list. An eighth grader reported being unable to check out George Orwell’s 1984 and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale from a school library.
EveryLibrary reported that Giles ordered the DoDEA to “immediately restore the library books and curricular materials” at five schools where items have been removed. She also ordered the department to cease any “further removals” of books.
This isn’t the end of the litigation, but the upshot of Giles’ order is that access to the censored material will be restored as the lawsuit continues. The ruling is a good sign – and yet another blow to Christian Nationalist attempts to use their religion to control what our young people can read and learn about.
