School District Consents to Protecting Citizens' Rights to Read from School Library Books at Board Meetings

"The Court permanently enjoins the District ... from ... prohibit[ing] ... speakers ... from reading or quoting verbatim from the text of any book or written works available in any FCS library or classroom, while addressing the school board during the public-comment period at school board meetings."

From the Jan. 30 Consent Judgment in Mama Bears of Forsyth County v. McCall (N.D. Ga.):

As part of the Parties' settlement of this matter, … the Court[s] enter the following order, which the Court finds appropriate and consistent with the Court's prior order issuing a preliminary injunction[:] …

[a.] The Court permanently enjoins the District … from enforcing any current or future FCS public participation policy to prohibit … any … speakers entitled to speak at an FCS school board meeting … from reading or quoting verbatim from the text of any book or written works available in any FCS library or classroom, while addressing the school board during the public-comment period at school board meetings.

[b.] Plaintiffs are each awarded nominal damages in the amount of $17.91 [plus costs and fees to be calculated later] ….

The $17.91 in nominal damages seems to be a little bit of symbolism offered by plaintiffs' lawyers, Institute for Free Speech, in this case and in others. Congratulations to Endel Rohe Kolde (Institute for Free Speech) and Erika Birg (Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough).

Comments

[Diogenes Radar Gun]

Posting clips of passages would be NSFW.

[Frank Drackman]

Ever read the "Definitive Edition" of "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank?? (who has done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more I notice) got it for my teenage daughters, hoo boy! is it ever "Definitive" but what do you expect? it's the diary of a Teenage Girl, who haven't really changed since J-hovah invented Teenage Girls. I won't spoil the ending for you.

The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition Hardcover – Deckle Edge, February 1, 1995

Frank

[Dr. Ed 2]

As I understand it, her father edited out all of that stuff from the version that is commonly read, and I don't have a problem with that.

It's hard to realize just how young she was because she was such a good writer.

[Frank Drackman]

Yeah, reading his daughter's diary, and people say I'm the creepy one? Of course J-hovah invented cellphones so I never had to worry about finding any daughter's diaries.

[Diogenes Radar Gun]

Was it written in a ball point pen, which weren't invented until 1944?

[Frank Drackman]

that was funnier when George Lincoln Rockwell told it.

[Absaroka]

I wanted to verify that I was reading between the lines correctly, and the facts are what I was guessing:

"Members of the public may reserve three minutes of speaking time at any regular monthly board meeting to share their views on topics relevant to Forsyth County Schools. Multiple district residents, including Mama Bears members and plaintiffs in the lawsuit Alison Hair and Cindy Martin, have used their time to read aloud from school library books they consider pornographic. Yet while these materials are available to kids in school, the Chair has cut off and banned speakers who read from them at Board meetings when he deems the language inappropriate or profane."

[Dr. Ed 2]

If you can't read it in front of adults at a school committee meeting, it ought not be in a K-12 library.

[Nige]

Adults can be squeamish and easily embarrassed. What did the Mama fascists read out?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Probably some Democrat kindergartener book that was teaching 6-year-olds how to graphically blow older mature gays. You know, stuff you people are pushing.

[Nige]

Oh yes, probably. 'Probably *anecdote*' does a lot of work in these cases.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

I take it you haven't seen any of these videos where these parents were reading from books.

Because if you did, then you'd know the content that's controversial.

[Nige]

They could be reading out sex-ed books, and of course they'd be explicit. They could be claiming these books are read to six-year-olds at storytime but they would probably be lying because I'm pretty sure anyone who did that would get arrested.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

More ignorant guessing on your part.

[Nige]

Yeah, my mistake, turns out six year olds were reading Jonathan Safran Foer novels.

[Frank Drackman]

FCC fines stations for saying those words.

[Frank Drackman]

I sense a Rev.olting Rev.Arthur T. Sandusky "Klinger" comment brewing, Forsyth County GA is the one that was supposedly "All White" in the 1980's, now as diverse (rhymes with perverse) as any in GA, and was the 15th fastest growing US County from 2010-2019, and the 19th wealthiest US County in 2018.
Trump did carry it 66/33 in 0-20

Frank

[M L]

I think I remember this one. Parent objects to some sort of sexually explicit or obscene material in the school, reads from the book at a board meeting.

Board says, that's too obscene to read at a school board meeting. But not too obscene for elementary school kids in school. The same school, education, and kids which are the subject of this meeting. LOL.

[Drewski]

You think you remember it and you got it mostly right, but the word "elementary" is just your mind trying to make it a better story. It doesn't need embellishment.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Sounds like both sides are "banning books".

[Bored Lawyer]

If you use a very loose, contentious definition of "banning."

One side is concerned about what is made available for children to read in a school library. Let's assume they think some material is not appropriate for school children. That's only "banning" if you use a very capacious definition.

The other side wants to prevent someone from bringing to the public's attention what is available in the school library, at a public meeting attended by adults. Most likely to avoid criticism of their own ineptitude or malfeasance. Not really banning, either.

[Dr. Ed 2]

What I don’t understand is why the Bong Hits for Jesus case isn’t being applied here — as I understand that, it was OK to restrict content for K-12 students because they were children.

OK, it’s appropriate to restrict what may be found in a K-12 library because it is being read by children. No one is saying that ADULTS can’t read it, nor that (misguided) adults can’t provide it to their children, only that it shouldn’t be in the children’s library.

My local town library has a children’s section in the basement, a “young adult” section in the old building, and then an adult section. Books aren’t banned, they are just sorted. And I can go down to the children’s section and borrow something if I need it for one of my courses — although I’ve gotten to just telling the children’s librarian what I am looking for and why I want it and letting her find it.

And I suppose an intrepid child could go up to the second floor where the adult books are, but they aren’t right in front of the child in the children’s room. And I have no doubt that every one of them can download XXX-rated porn on their cell phones if they want to, *I’m* not giving it to them. The school isn’t giving it to them.

To those who haven ‘t been in K-12, this may be a difficult distinction to see, but it’s like this — I can tell the child’s parents that *I* didn’t give the child that cellphone, *I* didn’t tell the child to go to (say) youporn.com, *I* don’t even by beer from my own students — I’ve always bought it out of the district.

NB: I was teaching in Maine where beer is sold in grocery stores, where a lot of high school students work as cashiers.

[Frank Drackman]

Read "Tropic of Cancer" in 7th grade (hey now!) not sure how it got in the Minot AFB Base Liberry but it was there, was even able to check it out myself,

Frank "Van Norden??? Personal Idol"

[Nige]

Books get sorted in school libraries, too. Except when they've been stripped completely bare to protect the children.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

These gay porn books were in the children's section because they were written for children.

[Nige]

In Forsyth County? Or somewhere else... out there...somewhere...

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Yes in Forsyth County. This whole case was brought on because the board banned these mothers from reading the sexually explicit gay material that were in the kids books.

[Nige]

As far as I can tell the person was cut off while reading the book Lucky by Alice Sebold. This is a memoir of the author's violent rape when she was eighteen, and was written specifically to raise awareness about rape and the experiences of rape survivors. Not sure there's much sexually explicit gay material in this book.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

You would be wrong. Of course.

[Nige]

About sexually explicit gay material in this book?

[Frank Drackman]

it's actually go a happy ending (unlike with Anne Frank)

Shortly after the assault, Sebold returned home to Pennsylvania to live with her family for the summer before beginning her sophomore year at Syracuse University.[8] After five months of no leads by the police, Sebold was walking down a sidewalk near the Syracuse campus when she saw a black man whom she believed to be the person who raped her.[5][4] In Lucky, she wrote that the man had approached her, saying "Hey, girl. Don't I know you from somewhere?", and that she had recognized his face from the attack.[8] She notified police, who were initially unable to find the man she had encountered. After an officer suggested the man might have been Anthony Broadwater, who had reportedly been seen in the area, police arrested and charged Broadwater.[8]

Broadwater was convicted of rape and sodomy, and sentenced to eight to 25 years in prison.[9] Broadwater ultimately served 16 years in prison, maintaining his innocence throughout. Because he would not admit to the attack, he was denied parole five times.[4] Broadwater tried five times to have the conviction overturned, with at least as many groups of lawyers.[4] Broadwater was released in 1999, and remained on New York's sex offender registry.[10]

[David Nieporent]

Um, not sure if you were being ironic, but that's not actually the ending. The rest of the story is that someone was going to make a movie of her memoir, but after starting the process and doing the research, realized that the conviction was insupportable. He hired a lawyer on Broadwater's behalf, and Broadwater was ultimately exonerated in 2021, with Sebold admitting she had gotten it wrong.

[Nige]

So her rapist got away and an innocent man went to jail? What happiness do you draw from any of that?

[santamonica811]

As a legal matter, I think this is the correct result.

But what does it mean to quote verbatim? For someone reading a passage from a book, it of course means to quote it exactly. But does "verbatim" also mean accurately quoting, say, one word from page 25 of a book, and one word from page 42, and 6 words from page 81?

I can totally understand an concerned reaction to someone saying, "For my allotted 3 minutes, I will now quote from 'Huck Finn.' Nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger [turning the book to the correct page for each utterance.], nigger, . . ." Or, to make it even worse, the speaker slowly turns and makes a point to make eye contact with each black person sitting in the audience as she slowly quotes.

That's a tough 3 minutes for anyone to have to sit there and listen. [On the other hand; I'm definitely sympathetic to the argument that, "Hey, these two following paragraphs are sexually explicit. If it's okay for my kid to read these in school, surely it's okay for us adults to hear, here tonight."]

I come from a free speech position. Parents should be allowed to read aloud these passages. And the school board (etc) should have the backbone to support good and bad literature, and to argue that, with censorship, the cure is worse than the disease.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Huck Finn is a difficult issue -- I once met a Black professor from Mississippi who put it in the best context I have seen -- it's a hateful word that no one should use today, but it's also an aspect of our shared history -- a rather painful one -- and we have to live with our history, we can't simply erase it.

That said, where is the line about harassment. If one was making a point of glaring at Black people in the audience while reading the one word from that book -- not the entire sentence but just the word -- THEN I think the chair would have grounds under Roberts' Rules to rule the person out of order.

[Frank Drackman]

Apparently the "Black Professor" never listened to any rap music.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

That’s a tough 3 minutes for anyone to have to sit there and listen.

You've been speaking with students from Prof. Volokh's class?

[Nige]

It's a wedge. You get them to ban the book they won't let them quote from in public, you end up having to ban every book they object to. For the kids. Huck Finn, To Kill A Mockingbird, Captain Underpants, Hunger Games, Beloved, Goosebumps, Diary Of A Part-Time Indian, etc etc.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

These books parents want to be removed from libraries are children's books with little kids graphically giving each other blowjobs.

You either don't know that, or do and act like you don't.

Why do you think it's appropriate for 6-8-year-olds to have graphic material teaching them how to have gay sex?

[Nige]

Where is the list of books these Mama Bears want banned? How many of them are what you describe? Exactly what you describe, mind.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

Good Lord, it makes me want to vomit to even share this with you.

" “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005 novel about a 9-year-old boy whose father was killed in the 9/11 attacks, Hair began to read: “I know that you give someone a blow job by putting your penis...”

https://www.propublica.org/article/georgia-book-banning-mama-bears-lawsuit

You Democrats are so fucking sick and demented.

[Nige]

So… you think six year olds are reading Jonathan Safran Foer? Are you actually being serious?

'it makes me want to vomit to even share this with you.'

Have you just discovered that there are books out there with sex in them?

[BravoCharlieDelta]

You think 9 year old boys giving blow jobs is just normal books out there with sex in them?

You people are evil, vile filth.

"Alison Hair wanted to draw attention to a book that was available at her son’s middle school library"

[Nige]

Children being confronted with sexuality is common enough in literature, both high and low, from Nabokov to King. Or is it just bad when it's gay sexuality? But, again, nobody who isn't a already a precocious and voracious reader and already in their teens is going to realistically pick up a Jonathan Safran Foer book. You seriously made it sound as if there was a *book for kids* with nine-year-olds having oral sex in it, not a book for adults presumably kept safely within the teenage section.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

It was a middle school library. In the US, middle school ages are 11, 12, 13.

You are sick.

[Nige]

You said six-year-olds! Sure, I'd pitch it to older teenagers, but 11-12-13 year olds aren't going to turn gay because they can see the spine of a book in a library. It's self-selecting. Any kid who thinks that's the sort of book for them is probably up for it, but that's also why you have librarrians, to act as final arbiter.

[David Nieporent]

You think 9 year old boys giving blow jobs is just normal books out there with sex in them?

Even setting aside that everyone in the book is fictional, there was no 9 year old boy (or girl, for that matter) giving a blow job in that book. I'm pretty sure there was no sex at all in the book, in fact.

[David Nieporent]

1) The anecdote you're talking about does not involve 6-8 year olds.

2) There was no graphic material teaching anyone how to have sex.

3) Why did you put the word "gay" in there? If it taught 6-8 year olds how to have straight sex, would you be fine with it?

4) It was not a children's book.

5) No kids — or adults, for that matter — gave anyone a blowjob, "graphically" or otherwise, in the book.

[Frank Drackman]

Sort of like how you can support Abortion all you want, but photos of aborted babies are "Obscene". Abortion's obscene all right, but not because of the photos.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Just a point for right wingers to consider. Your subject on this thread is, government book burning, pro or con. Try to remember that.

The notion of a library is not a notion that government controls what people may read. It is instead the notion of a broadly inclusive collection from which people choose what to read on their own.

The notion of choice about reading is one of the more important subjects being taught in the school. That is what the library is there in the school to do—to facilitate a message that each person will be at liberty, on their own, to explore ideas, including ideas in books.

Also, nobody following this thread is unaware that objections to free access to books come from the same religiously-inspired confusions that have always assailed freedom to read at liberty. Plenty of folks objecting now got that kind of anti-liberty training full strength during their own upbringings. It's a tradition which goes back centuries. A malign tradition which this nation was founded to oppose.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Just a point for right wingers to consider. Your subject on this thread is, government book burning, pro or con. Try to remember that.

That is, of course, a fundamental misrepresentation of the subject...which is not surprising at all given that you're one of if not THE most full-of-shit posters here.

[ThomasD]

Anyone know the exact significance of 1791? It's not the year Georgia entered the Union (1788), and it's not of particular significance to the State Constitution, first ratified in 1777 then amended in 1789 and 1798.

[Absaroka]

The Bill of Rights (the federal one) was ratified in 1791.

[EscherEnigma]

And yet, Volokh is still unaware or unconcerned about the many and repeated attempts from conservatives to ban books in libraries (both K-12 school and public libraries) and, in the case of Virginia, to ban the sale of specific books.

[Bored Lawyer]

What does that have to do with the price of balloons in China?

[bevis the lumberjack]

They elected Trump to their school board?

[TwelveInchPianist]

The education establishment and parents.

[bevis the lumberjack]

This must be intended for a different story because it’s not related to this one.

[Frank Drackman]

and here's "The Rest of the Story" (HT P. Harvey)
American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent(a) 0.5%
Asian alone, percent(a) 17.9%
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent(a) 0.1%
Two or More Races, percent 2.0%
Hispanic or Latino, percent(b) 9.8%
White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent 65.9%

Like I said, "Diverse"

Frank

[TwelveInchPianist]

Sigh. The board that was telling parents that they couldn't read books in meetings, yes.

[Dr. Ed 2]

You'd be surprised -- most parents think that those of us with EdD after our names know what we are talking about...

[bevis the lumberjack]

My hovercraft is full of eels.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Oh, I answered gibberish because I thought you posted gibberish, but I got it now. M

I plead the fifth.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Whatever their political flavor, they were stopping parents from reading passages from books in public meetings. Why were they doing that?

[Frank Drackman]

My bad, Gwinnett is more diverse, I should know, I live there (and perverse, again, I should know) But Fulton??? clearly you've never been there ( I mean really been there, Hartsfield-Zimbabwe doesn't cound (it's in Clayton County) You've got the White North Fulton and the Black South Fulton (John Lewis's "Shithole") and together, wow!! it's "Diverse" it's like saying Vermont's diverse because the US is,

Frank

[Frank Drackman]

OK, I know you love Pearl Necklaces, but it's your side who quivers (want to hear my Forsyth County joke??) at the mere mention that there's a baby in that Uterus.
OK, first you have to realize the County Seat of Forsyth County is named "Cumming" and there's a town called "Buford" 12 miles away in Gwinnett County.
"Did you hear they're changing the name of "Buford" to "Quiver"??? "No, why?"
"You'd quiver too if you were that close to Cumming!!"

OK, funnier when my 14 year old daughter told me (now flying F-16's in the Air Force)

Frank "you hear the one about the Rabbi's daughter???"

[bevis the lumberjack]

I took it to mean both sides of the lawsuit, which I think is probably what he meant.

[bevis the lumberjack]

It’s a Monty Python line. The Tobacconist sketch.

[Frank Drackman]

because you call yourself "Doctor"???
C'mon (Man!) you're one of "those" aren't you? How many times did you have yourself paged when you got your EdD?? (how do you pronounce that anyway? "Ed-Dee"?? "Eee Dee Dee"??
Nice thing about the old days in Med School, you got addressed as "Doctor" from day 1, although it was usually said in a demeaning sarcastic way, sharpest when it was said by a Nurse "well, "DOCTOR", do you mind if I find someone else to draw the patient's blood, while they still have some blood to draw??"
Of course now it's "Student-Doctor, Student-Physician, Medical Student" so by the time they get their Shingle (shit comes later) they're so ecstatic to be called "Dr" they don't complain about the minimal wage they earn in residency,

Frank

[Frank Drackman]

Don't like people of any age getting murdered, apparently you do.

[Hey Skipper]

At the moment you read this, there are only two ways you can die: either some natural cause (old age, disease, accident, etc) or intent: homicide or suicide.

Wind the clock back a tick, and that is still true. Keep winding it back. No matter how far you go, that remains true.

Therefore, all abortions are homicides. Invoking “people” is to entirely miss what is going on. “Reproductive Health”, as Orwellian an abuse of language as one could ever hope to find, isn’t about when personhood begins, but rather how existence ends.

It’s murder. Own it.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Why were they doing that?

Maybe because one long-standing premise which rightly applies to protecting expressive freedom is that books enable channels for private communication between authors and would-be readers.

It seems bizarre to insist that book banning extend to any and every book which could not be read without embarrassment on the floor of a legislative body. Shall we pick out the most graphic bits from Joyce's Ulysses, and insist that Republican Supreme Court nominees read them aloud to the Senate during confirmation hearings, to establish their 1A bona fides?

[Frank Drackman]

Queen, 1860 called, wants it's argument back (HT Barry Hussein O) confused?
"You can't murder a Slave, because it's not a person (people). Person's are not just bare DNA..." not typing the rest because it's too stupid.

Frank

[BravoCharlieDelta]

There's a nice calendar here you can click through.
https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/pregnancy-calendar-intro.html

Can you find which week do you think that baby is no longer a zygote and deserves protection?

[Hey Skipper]

You are blind to the inescapable problem.

Absent an abortion, that “zygote” would continue to exist until it died of natural causes or homicide.

There is no moment preceding death when that isn’t true.

There is no third option. Abortion is always premeditated murder. It would help matters greatly to call things what they are.

[Nige]

Unless they removed the books from their person, I'm not sure it amounts to the same thing.

[Nige]

The Mama Bears WANT the book banned. Reading out selected passages to generate outrage and and get them banned from the meeting is just the mecahnism whereby they go on to get them banned from schools.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

So what? That's what good parents do. Protect their children from homosexual pornography.

[Nige]

Those ARE both side of the lawsuit?

[Nige]

Bad parents claim anything LGTBQ related is pronograhy, just to get it banned. Also anything Black-related is CRT just to get it banned. Any book featuring rebellions against dystopian establishments are woke, just to get them banned. Any book by or for young people describing kids with tough lives or experiencing tough things, probably all three. Also anything with fart jokes. Whole lot of pretexting going on.

[BravoCharlieDelta]

And you think anything LGBTQP-related is what's being censored from being read aloud amongst adults?

[Nige]

That's the tactic, isn't it? Select something explicit, read it out to shock and horror, then claim six-year-olds are reading these books.

[Frank Drackman]

that's just crazy talk!! next you'll be claiming a 5 year old shot his teacher.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Maybe because one long-standing premise which rightly applies to protecting expressive freedom is that books enable channels for private communication between authors and would-be readers.

Long-standing with whom? Pop-quiz: What is the root of "publish"? The content of a published work that is available to the general public is no more a "private channel" of communication than a radio/television broadcast is.

It seems bizarre to insist that book banning extend to any and every book which could not be read without embarrassment on the floor of a legislative body. Shall we pick out the most graphic bits from Joyce’s Ulysses, and insist that Republican Supreme Court nominees read them aloud to the Senate during confirmation hearings, to establish their 1A bona fides?

Not surprisingly, the point has sailed over your head higher than a Chinese spy balloon. If the contents of a work are too graphic/obscene/offensive/whatever for a room of adults to comfortably hear it is damned difficult to argue that they constitute appropriate material for school-aged kids. Conversely, it's difficult to argue that any material that is appropriate for those same kids is somehow too graphic/obscene/offensive/whatever to be allowed to be recited to a room full of adults...especially when those adults are responsible for deciding what materials those kids should have access to.