2023—Federal district judge Robert L. Hinkle (in Doe v. Lapado) enjoins Florida officials from enforcing a state law that bars doctors from administering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as treatment for minors with gender dysphoria.
2024—A divided panel of the Fifth Circuit rules (in Little v. Llano County) that a library patron’s First Amendment rights are violated when a librarian removes a book “with the substantial motivation to prevent access to particular points of view.” At the same time, the majority says that a librarian may remove a book based on a belief that it is “pervasively vulgar” or “on grounds of educational suitability” or out of concerns over “accuracy of the content.”
In dissent, Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan argues that the majority’s rules are a “disaster” without “any basis in law or common sense” and that “applying them will be a nightmare.” He points out that the members of the majority can’t even agree how their rules apply to more than half the books in this case, including “crude children’s books like I Broke My Butt!, Gary the Goose and His Gas on the Loose, and Freddie the Farting Snowman. Judge Duncan explains that “[a] public library’s choice of some books for its collection, and its rejection of others, is government speech” that is not constrained by the Free Speech Clause: “In other words, the Constitution does not deputize federal judges as the Library Police.”
In May 2025, the en banc Fifth Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Duncan, will repudiate the panel’s holding by a vote of 10 to 7.