Two years ago, Democrats repeatedly and forcefully warned Republicans and Gov. Ron DeSantis that a new law making it easier to challenge textbooks was so broadly worded that it would wreak havoc across the state.
Now they can say, “I told you so.”
DeSantis revisited the 2022 law on Tuesday when he signed a bill that narrowed its focus. He blamed liberal activists for abusing the law, not citizens whose objections to certain books are responsible for the majority of book removals from school libraries and classrooms.
The Associated Press asked DeSantis’ office for examples of liberal activists abusing the law and gave one: Chaz Stevens, a South Florida resident who has often castigated the administration. Stevens raised challenges in dozens of school districts about the Bible, dictionaries and thesauruses.
The change in law “will ensure that book challenges are limited for individuals, like Chaz, who do not have children who have access to the school district’s materials,” DeSantis spokeswoman Julia Friedland said in an email. She did not respond to follow-up emails asking for more samples.
Stevens, who made national news 11 years ago when he installed a Festivus pole made of beer cans across from a nativity scene in the Capitol, was glad DeSantis’ office selected him.
‘If they have to make the stupid ones even stupider, they’ll send me up there. I am part comedian, part activist, part artist. I just want a better society,” Stevens said. “I’m an idiot, but at the same time I’m a smart guy.”
While DeSantis’ predecessor, current Republican Sen. Rick Scott, allowed what was then called a “free speech zone” in the Capitol rotunda, the rules changed under DeSantis and new barriers were erected to using the Capitol space for political expression. The League of Women Voters and Stevens are among the applicants denied entry under the new rules.
“I didn’t know I have the power of millions!” Stevens said. “I am only one man. I am an agitator. I know my role in it.”
DeSantis said activists’ efforts had made a “mockery” of the original law.
“The idea that anyone can use parental rights and curriculum transparency to object and mock every single book is simply wrong,” he said the day before the bill was signed. “That’s performative. That’s politics.”
Coincidentally, PEN America, a group that fights book bans, released a report Tuesday saying that Florida is responsible for 72% of the books removed from the nation’s schools in the first half of the current school year.
The organization said liberal activists are not the ones to blame for abusing the law.
“The majority of the books we see being removed are books that speak to LBTQ+ identities, that feature characters of color, that talk about race and racism, that contain depictions of sexual experiences in the broadest interpretation of that term,” says Kasey Meehan. , Program Director of Pen America’s Freedom to Read.
These challenges are being taken on by conservative individuals and groups like Moms For Liberty, Meehan said.
The original law allowed anyone – parent or not, district resident or not – to challenge books as many times as he or she wanted. Once challenged, a book must be removed from the shelves until the school district resolves the complaint. The new law limits people who do not have students in a school district to one challenge per month.
According to the PEN America report, Florida is responsible for 3,135 of the 4,349 textbook bans in the United States so far this school year. Just this week in conservative Clay County, one person challenged 40 books, Meehan said.
Before withdrawing from the Republican presidential primary, DeSantis campaigned heavily on his education platform, including legislation that would give people more power to challenge books.
“It’s just a big mess that DeSantis has created and now he’s trying to disavow it, but I don’t know if he can distance himself from it because he campaigned so hard on it,” said Democratic Party Leader Fentrice Driskell. the House of Representatives.
It’s not the only example of the tough-talking governor having to make adjustments to the ideology he championed while seeking the White House.
He has also made concessions in the settlement of several lawsuits involving the state and Walt Disney World. The dispute between them erupted in 2022 after the company spoke out against a DeSantis-backed law that opponents called “Don’t Say Gay.” The law prohibits classroom lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation.
Driskell pointed out that DeSantis had been warned that problems would arise if the book ban law were passed in 2022.
“We told him that. “The Florida House Democrats in the room — in our debate, in our questions — pointed out the vagueness of the original law and how it could be subject to abuse,” she said. “Chaz is not the problem. It is the people who take liberties with the law who are the problem.”