From Maren Williams at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund:
Florida governor Rick Scott yesterday approved legislation that will facilitate challenges to classroom materials, allowing any county resident to lodge a challenge against textbooks or supplemental materials that they claim fail to present “a noninflammatory, objective, and balanced viewpoint on issues.” Intellectual freedom advocates are bracing for challenges on multiple topics of public contention, from evolution and climate change to fictional works featuring Muslim or LGBTQIA characters.
The bill that Gov. Scott signed without comment this week, HB 989, is a modified version of two others that failed during the 2016 legislative session. Two groups that pushed the legislation, the Florida Citizens’ Alliance and Better Collier County Public Schools, have made no effort to hide their true intention of using it in combination with a religious freedom law also passed this year in order to suppress classroom materials that include information or viewpoints with which they simply don’t agree.
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