
In June 2024, the ACLU of Florida and partners filed a lawsuit representing parents of Florida public school students who sued the DeSantis administration’s Board of Education for violating their First Amendment rights through the implementation of 2023’s HB 1069. The lawsuit argues that HB 1069 discriminates against parents who oppose book bans and censorship. It gives parents who favor censorship a formal process to challenge a local school board’s decision to keep a book on school shelves, while parents opposed to censorship are excluded from the process altogether. The plaintiffs, parents of students in Florida public schools, are seeking review of their local school boards’ decisions to remove or restrict books in their children's school districts and do not have access to seek that review. On January 27, 2025, the court granted the state’s motion to dismiss the case. We appealed the decision and filed our opening brief in the Eleventh Circuit on June 4, 2025.