Judge says school board can’t remove sexually explicit books from school libraries

This clearly demonstrates how hard it is to take schools back from the aggressive liberal agenda. The only sure way to protect kids is to get them out.

A federal judge has ruled that a Colorado school board can’t remove sexually explicit, profane and “transgender” books from school libraries.

The ruling by Charlotte Sweeney of the U.S. District Court of Colorado says that the school board is engaging in viewpoint discrimination because the board is conservative. Appointed by President Joe Biden in 2022, Sweeney is the first openly lesbian federal judge west of the Mississippi.

“Sweeney second-guessed the school district’s objections to the books’ contents, calling the objections ‘pretexual’ and condemning the removals as partisan because school board members had discussed following their conservative convictions when debating the removal of the books,” The Daily Signal reported.

This clearly demonstrates how hard it is to take schools back from the aggressive liberal agenda. The only sure way to protect kids is to get them out. Parents and local communities can keep trying, but even when voters elect a conservative school board, there always seems to be a handy leftist judge to step in and enforce woke orthodoxy.

The ACLU’s Colorado chapter filed a suit on behalf of two minors and also the NAACP Wyoming State Area Conference, and the Authors Guild. The judge granted a preliminary injunction in March, mandating that the Elizabeth School District restore the books.

Julian Ellis, the school district’s attorney, told The Daily Signal that the district had asked Sweeney to hold an evidentiary hearing so she could review the books herself, yet the judge refused. The board had included segments from the books in its filings, aiming to demonstrate the vulgar and inappropriate material, but the judge dismissed those.

The judge ruled that “the district’s decisive factor in voting to permanently banish the removed books was because the district disagreed with the views expressed in the books and to further their preferred political orthodoxy.”

Ellis asks, “How could a ‘conservative’ school board ever remove problematic content without the board members’ conservatism disqualifying the decision?” He condemned the ruling as “unequal treatment because of one’s conservative values,” The Daily Caller reported.

This isn’t just about viewpoints or even parental rights. It’s about protecting kids from perverse materials designed to corrupt them. Nobody has the right to do that to children. Yet this revolting material is standard fare in all too many government schools.

 Dan Snowberger, the school board’s attorney, said, “We have an unelected judge forcing her particular opinion and values on a community with which she has no connection and no desire to hear from the defendants, judging all submitted evidence as invalid over a few cherry-picked, out-of-context emails regarding a couple of the books in question.”

The ‘viewpoint discrimination’ argument always seems to go in one direction. Can you imagine if some liberal school board objected to conservative texts like, say, ‘The Tuttle Twins’ series, which teaches free market principles and patriotism, or some books advocating chastity before marriage and warning of the physical consequences of careless sex? The judge would probably be fine with their removal.

Despite the best efforts of good teachers and some school board members who have a heart for kids, the government education system in America is rotten to the core, and it has enforcers on the federal bench like Sweeney to make sure that it stays that way.

USPIE aspires to create a culture where parents, empowered with the authority to choose what and how their children learn, are the undisputed primary educators of their children; where local schools operate in support of families, and where education is unencumbered by federal mandates.

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