ACLU files lawsuit over Miami school book ban

MIAMI (Reuters) – The American Civil Liberties Union filed
a lawsuit against Miami’s public school system on Wednesday,
saying its ban on a children’s book about travel to Cuba was
unconstitutional.

The Miami-Dade County School Board voted to order the
removal of the book, “Vamos a Cuba” and its English-language
version “A Visit to Cuba,” from school libraries last week
after a parent complained that it painted an overly favorable
picture of life in the Communist-ruled island nation.

The ban has triggered what ACLU officials described at a
news conference on Wednesday as the first major legal battle
over book censorship by a U.S. public school system since 1982.

Outlining the group’s lawsuit, which was filed in U.S.
District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Howard
Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, said the book
ban violated the First Amendment and openly defied a U.S. law
prohibiting censorship.

He also suggested that “Vamos a Cuba” had only stirred
controversy because of pressure from Miami’s politically
powerful Cuban exile community.

The complaint against the book, filed in April, came from a
self-described former political prisoner in Cuba.

“It’s another unfortunate self-inflicted black eye on this
community. We can appreciate that the book might be found to be
offensive by some parents, but censorship is a cure that is
worse than the disease,” Simon said.

“The fight for freedom in Cuba cannot be a fight against
the First Amendment in Miami,” he added.

The book is part of a series of books that covers a total
of 20 countries in English and four in Spanish.

They are intended for readers between 5 and 7 years old and
are meant to provide basic information about what life is like
for children beyond their borders.

The Miami-Dade School Board received no complaints about
any of the books except the one on Cuba but it voted to remove
all 24 of them from library shelves nonetheless.

Simon said the move was especially alarming because the
books were all optional library reading material and not
required textbooks used in the classroom.