Court won’t get involved in book banning case
MIAMI (AP) – The Supreme Court is staying out of a dispute in Miami between school officials and civil libertarians over a book about Cuba that depicts smiling children in communist uniforms but avoids mention of problems in the country.
The justices on Monday rejected an appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida that sought to prevent Miami officials from removing the book “Vamos a Cuba” and its English-language version, “A Visit to Cuba,” from library shelves.
The Miami-Dade County School District board wants to ban the book, intended for children ages 5 to 8, because it does not mention limits on civil liberties in Cuba, political indoctrination of public school children and food rationing among other issues. Board members voted to remove the book after a parent who spent time as a political prisoner in Cuba complained.
The school district would not immediately comment on the decision.
Frank Bolanos, a former Miami-Dade school board chair who championed efforts to remove the book, said he was pleased.
“I support the author’s right to publish the book as incomplete and defective as it may be,” he said, “but we’re simply not required to pay for it with taxpayers dollars,” he said, although the district already spent money to buy the book. Bolanos said the case sets precedent for districts to back parents’ rights in future cases.
The ACLU disagreed.
“These books were removed under the guise of ‘inaccuracies,’ but the real reason they were removed was because the books ran afoul of the political orthodoxy of a majority of the school board members,” Florida director Howard Simon said.
“If that is to become the new standard for censoring books from public library shelves, the ACLU may be immersed in censorship battles for years to come.”
A federal judge in Miami ruled that the board should add books of different perspectives instead of removing offending titles. But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta said the district wouldn’t be infringing on freedom of speech rights by removing the book because it presents an inaccurate view of life in Cuba.