ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — Shortly after the Florida Board of Education finished its August meeting in St. Augustine Wednesday, a group of authors, parents, students and literature advocates gathered just outside the meeting room. PEN America, a freedom of literature nonprofit, helped lead the gathering. 

The push to remove books in Florida started in earnest in 2023 with a new state law. Then earlier this summer, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sent the Hillsborough County School Superintendent a letter requesting “immediate removal” of certain books in schools, saying they were “patently pornographic.”

State Board of Education Member Ryan Perry told the superintendent in June, “I’ve read through these books. These are nasty, disgusting books. They have no place in a school in Florida, not even California.”

That request from Uthmeier led to other counties across the state either reviewing or, in some cases, yanking certain books off the shelves.

Wednesday, at the PEN America gathering in St. Augustine, William Johnson told the crowd, “This summer alone, at least nine counties have pulled as many as 600 books from the shelves.”

Johnson is the PEN America Florida director. He said the book excerpts that the state provided as evidence for removal from bookshelves were taken out of context.

“We’re talking about books like The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Kite Runner, even still, Judy Blume,” Johnson said.

Kristin Arnett, an author who lives in Orlando, was at Wednesday’s gathering. She told First Coast News, “Many of the materials that were removed are not something that anyone would sit down and consider pornographic.”

A federal judge this month said the Florida law passed in 2023 — allowing parents to challenge books over purportedly pornographic content — was overbroad and unconstitutional.

Johnson said, “I’m happy about the judge’s decision. I’m still concerned about state overreach because we’re finding the state doesn’t care about rules.”

Meanwhile, the Florida Board of Education continued its work, with one of the last comments of Wednesday’s meeting coming from Board Member Kelly Garcia, “I am glad we were able to shine a light again on some of the inappropriate instructional materials that are clearly inappropriate and continue to sit on our shelves and that are very easy for children to access.”