Supreme Court Lets Miami-Dade’s Vamos Ban Stand

November 18, 2009

Intellectual-freedom advocates are expressing disappointment at the November 16 refusal of the Supreme Court to hear their appeal of ACLU of Florida v. Miami-Dade School Board. The decision lets stand a February appeals-court ruling that permits the Miami-Dade School Board to keep Vamos a Cuba and its English-language translation A Visit to Cuba off media-center shelves districtwide, the Associated Press reported November 16.

The original complainant, a parent who had been a political prisoner in Cuba, had objected in 2006 to the book geared for 5–8-year-olds because, he said, it offers a deceptively idealistic view of modern Cuban life instead of depicting civil liberties violations and other harsh realities. A three-judge appeals-court panel agreed (PDF file) that the ban was not censorship since the board was deselecting a title containing inaccuracies.

Kent Oliver, director of the Stark County (Ohio) District Library and president of ALA’s Freedom to Read Foundation, characterized the outcome as “a very clear example of a political agenda being played out in the school library and the [district] court.” Oliver went on to say that the case “really shows the importance of the First Amendment and our need to defend the right to read,” explaining that the school board’s removal of the book, whose cover featured laughing Cuban children dressed in the uniform of the nation’s Communist Party, was “about local politics trying to control the information that children access in their schools.”

Agreeing with Oliver, JoNel Nelson, cooperating counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, stated November 16 that the 33 copies of Vamos “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. 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.” She called on the school board “to retain these books” anyway, including the 23 others in the A Visit to . . . series about travel and culture in countries around the world. The board removed them in 2006 along with Vamos even though, Nelson specified, “They were never the subject of a complaint or a review by a committee.”

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