Education Department Action against Georgia School District over Book Review Absurd

In a disturbing act of federal overreach, the Department of Education said in a letter to Georgia’s Forsyth County Schools superintendent that the school district’s book-review process may have created a hostile environment for students, thereby violating civil-rights law. The letter came after months of heated debate within the FCS community, particularly among parents and students, over whether books with sexually explicit scenes should be in the district’s middle-school libraries. Instead of allowing the local community to navigate its disagreements, the Biden DOE’s Office for Civil Rights stepped in, making baseless and tangential claims that the disagreements in and of themselves caused students of color and LGBTQI+ students to experience a discriminatory environment.

Liberal media outlets have characterized the Education Department’s actions as historic. The Washington Post, for instance, implied that the Education Department is protecting “books that deal with race, racism, and LGBTQ characters and themes,” noting the non-white and LGBTQ identities of the authors or of the characters of some of the books that the Georgia school district had considered removing. But the FCS debate was not about the authors of these books or their characters; it was about maintaining children’s innocence. Equally important is that removing the books was a local decision, and by intervening the federal government is abusing its power to enforce partisan preferences on a school district.

About the Author

Sahar Tartak

Sahar Tartak is a former summer intern at National Review. A student at Yale University, Sahar is active in Jewish life and free speech on campus.

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In a disturbing act of federal overreach, the Department of Education said in a letter to Georgia’s Forsyth County Schools superintendent that the school district’s book-review process may have created a hostile environment for students, thereby violating civil-rights law. The letter came after months of heated debate within the FCS community, particularly among parents and students, over whether books with sexually explicit scenes should be in the district’s middle-school libraries. Instead of allowing the local community to navigate its disagreements, the Biden DOE’s Office for Civil Rights stepped in, making baseless and tangential claims that the disagreements in and of themselves caused students of color and LGBTQI+ students to experience a discriminatory environment.

Liberal media outlets have characterized the Education Department’s actions as historic. The Washington Post, for instance, implied that the Education Department is protecting “books that deal with race, racism, and LGBTQ characters and themes,” noting the non-white and LGBTQ identities of the authors or of the characters of some of the books that the Georgia school district had considered removing. But the FCS debate was not about the authors of these books or their characters; it was about maintaining children’s innocence. Equally important is that removing the books was a local decision, and by intervening the federal government is abusing its power to enforce partisan preferences on a school district.