An elementary school that serves children of military families at Fort Campbell must put books that the Department of Defense ordered to be removed from its library shelves back, per a Virginia federal judge’s ruling issued Monday.
In the order, U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles said public school libraries are typically seen as “places of academic freedom and intellectual pursuit,” and directed officials at five schools run by the Department of Defense Education Activity – including Barsanti Elementary School at Fort Campbell – to return removed books to libraries and reverse curriculum changes made in the wake of some of President Donald Trump’s executive orders.
Earlier this year, six families – including two with students at the Fort Campbell elementary school – filed a lawsuit against the DoDEA, the agency that oversees schools on some of the country’s military bases. That suit came after Trump issued several executive orders directing federal agencies, including DoDEA, to remove materials with references to “gender ideology,” “discriminatory equity ideology” and “divisive concepts.”
As a result, nearly 600 books were ordered to be removed from DoDEA school libraries for “review” of whether they referenced some of the “divisive concepts” Trump outlined in his executive orders. Many of those titles highlight LGBTQ+ themes and address racism.
DoDEA schools were also prohibited from using official resources to hold events recognizing cultural awareness months, like Black History Month. In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs said DoDEA leaders sent educators a memo ordering them not to use curriculum materials “potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics” – including some elementary school materials related to immigration and AP Psychology units focusing on gender and sexual identity.
In a statement, ACLU of Kentucky legal director Corey Shapiro said removing books with content the Trump administration doesn’t like is "censorship, plain and simple” – and praised the judge’s ruling that put these materials back in classrooms.
“[Students] get to be able to learn the full history in all sorts of books that teach varying perspectives, varying ideas that reflect the full history of our country,” Shapiro said.
According to the lawsuit, the six military families – represented by the ACLU – argue that these removals and curriculum changes violated their First Amendment rights. Attorneys for DoDEA argued that the book removals and curriculum changes constitute “government speech,” an exception to the First Amendment allowing the government to discriminate based on content or viewpoints through its own speech.
Jessica Henniger is a parent of three Barsanti Elementary students the ACLU is representing in the lawsuit. In a video from the ACLU of Kentucky, Henniger said she wanted to take a stand against censorship.
“For me, it’s looking at history and knowing how quickly becoming complacent can become being at risk. Being at risk of losing freedom, being at risk of losing everything my husband has fought for for this country, that our ancestors have fought for for this country,” Henniger said. “I don’t want to be the person who sat around and said ‘oh, that’s never going to happen,’ …and then regretting the fact that I didn’t stand up and do something when I could.”
The federal judge’s order to reverse these book removals and curriculum changes only applies to the schools that students involved in the lawsuit attend. That means it only applies to one of the six schools in Fort Campbell’s district – and only five of the 161 DoDEA schools across the world. The other schools that are subject to this order are in Virginia, Italy and Japan.
