World News | Georgia school book ban could violate civil rights law, federal officials warn

ATLANTA (USA) May 23 (AP) — A suburban Atlanta school district’s decision to remove some books from its library may have created a hostile environment that violates federal laws against racial and sex discrimination, the U.S. Department of Education found.

The legal intervention by the department’s civil rights office could thwart efforts by other public school districts across the country to ban books, especially if the bans focus on books containing LGBTQ and nonwhite content.

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The Forsyth County School District settled the complaint, agreeing to explain the book removal process to students and provide “supportive measures” for students who may have been harmed. Forsyth County will also include a question on the issue in its annual school climate survey of middle and high school students next year.

The federal government intervened after months of wrangling over the books in the region of 54,000 students. Georgia’s wealthiest county, Forsyth is a rapidly growing suburb about 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of downtown Atlanta.

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Forsyth County removed eight books, including Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” in January 2022, but allowed seven to return after further consideration . It only excluded George M. Johnson’s memoir, “All Boys Aren’t Blue.”

Federal officials wrote in a letter Friday that Forsyth County hadn’t made too many mistakes in the relocation, saying “the district limited its book screening process to pornographic material.” Instead, officials found that the problem lay in district How Officials Talked About Severance at School Board Meetings.

“Communications at the board meeting gave the impression that books were being screened to exclude diverse authors and characters, including LGBTQI+ and nonwhite authors, leading to increased fear and possible harassment,” the department wrote.

A student attended a board meeting warning that “the school environment has become worse after books were removed and he was afraid to go to school,” the letter said.

Becky Woomer of the Forsyth Education Alliance, who opposed the removal of the books, said the findings supported concerns that the school district supported anti-gay views.

“Having those points validated, yes, I think it’s going to hurt students,” Woomer said. “When the books were put back on the shelf, it was all silent. So as a school community it never felt like OK, we screwed up, we’re sorry.'”

Forsyth County Schools spokeswoman Jennifer Caracciolo said a statement to students would help dispel those impressions.

“It’s more about making sure we communicate with the students,” she said.

The protest against books deemed inappropriate was led by a conservative group, the Mama Bears of Forsyth County. Members read sexually explicit passages from the textbook until the school board chair ordered them to stop in March 2022, noting that board policy prohibits profanity. Members of the group argued that if the books weren’t appropriate for board meetings, they weren’t appropriate for children either.

The board subsequently banned one member, Alison Hair, from board meetings. Hair and Mama Bears chairman Cindy Martin sued in federal court and won a ruling in February that the ban violated their First Amendment rights. The group then resumed reading the books at the meeting.

Martin said Monday the settlement would allow the federal government to “continue to find ways to infiltrate the public school system with its aggressive agenda,” adding that federal officials found no violations.

“This has nothing to do with the book,” Martin wrote in an email. “This is about the federal government using bullying tactics against our school system to indoctrinate our children with LGBTQ ideology.”

The Forsyth County book challenge continues under a Georgia 2022 law that allows parents to challenge material they deem obscene. The school district agreed last month not to allow any student to borrow “The Handsome Girl and Her Beautiful Boy” by BT Gottfried without a parent’s signature.

Before the book challenge in Republican-dominated Forsyth County, conservatives claimed the district was teaching harmful material about race. Controversy has sometimes centered on district efforts to enroll nonwhite students in counties that were once entirely white. In 1912, white mobs evicted the county’s entire black population.

Georgia is just one state that makes challenging the books easier.The American Library Association reports more than 1,200 challenges to books nationwide in 2022, the most since the ALA began preserving data 20 years ago

Last week, authors, parents, publisher Penguin Random House and author group PEN America sued the school system in Escambia County, Florida, alleging that the school board is removing and restricting books despite a review board recommending that they be kept.

In December, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights said it was investigating a school district in Granbury, Texas, after more than 100 books, including some on LGBTQ themes, were pulled from shelves. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)