Federal court ruling revives Escambia book ban challenge
Tallahassee Democrat | By Stephany Matat | July 17, 2025
The three-judge panel ruled July 15 to dismiss the appeal of a district court order.
A federal appeals court told the Escambia County School Board that it lacked jurisdiction to hear an appeal for board members seeking “legislative privilege” in a book ban lawsuit.
The three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled July 15 to dismiss the appeal of a district court order, which itself vacated a protective order for board members to be protected by legislative privilege. That’s the defense the school board used to argue that its members should not have to testify on the decision-making process for book removals.
The 2023 lawsuit was held off pending the federal appeals court decision, so now it is expected to resume, stemming from accusations the school board violated the First Amendment and the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause.
Most of the removed books were authored by people of color or LGBTQ+ people. The dismissal means school board members could eventually have to testify on why they decided to remove the books.
Appellate opinion grounded in legal technicality
This appeal aimed to overturn a ruling by U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II from November. But Judges Elizabeth Branch, Nancy Abudu and Embry Kidd focused the ruling on jurisdictional grounds: The school board appealed as a whole rather than the individual board members. (Branch was appointed by President Donald Trump in his first presidential term; Abudu and Kidd were both appointed by Biden.)
“In summary, because the legislative privilege asserted belongs to the Board members (and) not the Board, and the Board members did not participate in the litigation below, we lack appellate jurisdiction to review this appeal and must dismiss,” the opinion says.
The lawsuit was originally filed by parents, authors, free speech group PEN America and the country’s largest publisher, Penguin Random House. Over the years, it’s grown substantially in cost. Public records obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida in late 2024 found the Escambia County School Board spent more than $440,000 on attorney fees.
The state of book bans in Florida
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Curriculum Transparency Act in 2022, which required districts to keep logs of books on their shelves and those put for review after a complaint.
In response, his administration and the Escambia County School Board have argued that removing library books is in line with “government speech,” the legal doctrine that the government has the right to promote its own views without being required to provide equal time or a platform for opposing views.
This argument has been increasingly popular over the past few years in Florida, but it still hasn’t been settled in cases in which federal judges aren’t fully convinced that book removals fall under a First Amendment override of government speech.
More recently, Escambia County’s school board voted to remove more books from its library shelves mid-June, including 15 titles recommended for removal by the superintendent there, Keith Leonard, and three books identified as “pornographic” by Attorney General James Uthmeier.
