A school board in Florida has been sued for allegedly providing school libraries with books that are “obscene, lewd, and lascivious.”
The lawsuit filed by a man named Robert Craft accuses the Sarasota School Board of “purchasing and propagating obscene, lewd, and lascivious materials for distribution to children.”
The lawsuit lists over 50 books, including “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and “How to be an Antiracist” by Critical Race Theory proponent Ibram Kendi.
Sarasota School Board Lawsuit by Jim DeLa
Craft is petitioning for an emergency injunction to “stop children’s exposure to sexually explicit materials and child rape materials in Sarasota County Schools.” The lawsuit also requests that the sheriff’s department seize the materials to be used as evidence.
The lawsuit claims that the board has “repeatedly ignored the public outcry for the removal and censorship of explicitly sexual material from public schools.”
Daniel DeLeo, the lawyer representing the school board, told ABC7 that he thinks the suit is “ridiculous.”
“It’s rife with error,” DeLeo said. “It has no legal merit at all.”
DeLeo claimed that libraries have special First Amendment protections if the book has “scholarly or artistic merit.”
“The books have been called into question. It’s up to a jury,” Craft told the station.