“Our books are under a shadow ban,” said Nina Perez, a Jacksonville resident and director of anti-restriction organization MomsRising. “They are mired in the administrative process.”

Tracey Pierce, a spokeswoman for the Duval School District, said in an email last month that these actions followed the state Department of Education’s guidance. Classes should never have been left without reading materials, she said, as students still had access to approved books and collections. She acknowledged that “a small number of directors briefly closed or over-restricted” media centers and was advised to restore access.

Mr. DeSantis has responded aggressively to criticism over the ban on books in public schools. He dismissed news reports that Duval County Schools removed a headline about baseball player Roberto Clemente as a “joke”, accusing critics of “fabricating” the book ban story.

The book, which refers to the racism Mr. Clemente has faced, was removed and then reinstated in February after being reviewed. Last month, the state education commissioner named John Winter’s Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates Book of the Month for students in grades three through five.

At a press conference last month, Mr. DeSantis stood behind a sign that read “HOAX Book Ban Exposed” and said the state was trying to protect children from pornographic material. The event kicked off with a presentation of books that were reported to be seized in the county, including Gender Queer by Maya Kobabe and “Flamer”, Mike Curato — and highlighted scenes about sexual encounters and masturbation.

“This idea of ​​banning books in Florida, that books are somehow not needed in the library, is a hoax,” Mr. DeSantis said. “And it’s a really nasty hoax because it’s a hoax designed to desecrate and sexualize our children.”

Critics in the state are fighting back. In March, the human rights organization Democracy Forward filed lawsuit with the state on behalf of the Florida Education Association and other groups challenging the rules, alleging they censor educators, limit students’ access to books, and harm public education. Florida’s Reading Freedom Project staged a rally last month in Tallahassee with writers and free speech activists to protest censorship.

Two weeks after Texas Judge Matthew Kachsmarik issued a nationwide ban on abortion pills Mifepristone – Withdrawal of FDA drug approval since 2000 – Supreme Court there was orderpending full consideration of the appeal on the merits of the case. This decision delays not only the sentencing of Kaczmarik, but also decision of the Fifth Arbitration Court of Appeal, which restored the 2000 FDA approval for the drug but banned the 2016 FDA update that extended mifepristone use from seven to 10 weeks. This means that abortion pills are allowed, again, up to 10 weeks.

This is a victory for reproductive rights as they preserve the rights that people still have after last year’s Dobbs V. Jackson Women’s Health cancellation of the decision Row vs Calf counted as a “win”. Now the case is heading back to the Fifth Circuit, which will hold a hearing and, almost certainly, issue another chaotic ruling against abortion pills. This decision will eventually be challenged in the Supreme Court, so we don’t know when access to medical abortion will again be in jeopardy.

However, this is not a complete victory. The Supreme Court should have dismissed Kaczmarik’s decision outright, rather than postponing it until further review. This is because Kachmaryk’s decision was not only wrong in substance, but also a complete disaster in technical and procedural terms. The plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit to ban abortion pills – a group of hyper-Christian “doctors” – did not demonstrate that they had suffered any harm from the FDA’s approval process and therefore should not have been allowed to go to trial. Moreover, the lawsuit should have had a statute of limitations – there is a six-year statute of limitations for challenging FDA decisions – and Kaczmarik simply ignored it. These procedural shortcomings meant that the case could be closed without dragging it out until a later date when the court decided to consider the case in its entirety.

However, this outcome has always been the most likely. The Supreme Court doesn’t like to dismiss cases without a full hearing, and while I thought this case was so idiotic that it could and should have overcome that general preference, I’m not surprised that the court’s conservative supermajority wanted to give forced birth favor a full hearing. .

I’m also not surprised that the votes of the judges ultimately fell short. The court granted a stay in the form of an unsigned one-paragraph order, but two judges who disagreed publicly expressed their disagreement: Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Alito wrote a complete disagreement.

Pretty much everything Alito writes is offensive, wrong, and dangerous, and that’s the case here too. But since he’s lost (so far), his disagreement also smacks of bitterness. He is furious, and it is easy to imagine how he types in the dead of night with his face wrinkled from the bile that enlivens his soul. Alito essentially held the entire country hostage by this ruling for a couple of days, just so he could scatter sand in a form of dissent.