ArentFox Schiff Represents Major Publishers and Authors in Constitutional Challenge Against Florida Book Removal Law

ArentFox Schiff is representing Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, MacMillan, Simon & Schuster, Sourcebooks, five award-winning authors, The Authors Guild, and two high school students in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a Florida law requiring the removal of books from school and classroom libraries.

The case, which was filed on August 29 in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, seeks a declaratory judgment that two provisions of a Florida law — which require the removal of books from school libraries if they contain any sexual content without consideration of their value as a whole — violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Under these provisions, hundreds of books have been removed from school libraries, including classics renowned for their literary value that are not remotely obscene such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

A link to The Wall Street Journal’s coverage is here and a link to The New York Times’s coverage is here.

The AFS team includes Frederick J. Sperling, Adam Diederich, Kirstie Brenson, Meera Gorjala, and Devin Ross.

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