The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit this week against the Defense Department’s school system after removing books discussing gender and race.
“Since January, their schools have systemically removed books, altered curricula, and canceled events that the government has accused of promoting ‘gender ideology’ or ‘divisive equity ideology,'” the ACLU claimed in a press release. “This has included materials about slavery, Native American history, LGBTQ identities and history, and preventing sexual harassment and abuse, as well as portions of the Advanced Placement (AP) Psychology curriculum.”
According to the group’s lawsuit, the Department of Defense Education Activity is “quarantining library books and whitewashing curricula in its civilian schools. Right now, DoDEA is scrubbing references to race and gender from its libraries and lessons with no regard to how canonical, award-winning, or age-appropriate the material might be.”
“DoDEA’s book and curricular removals violate students’ First Amendment right to receive information,” the filing says. “While the government has broad discretion to populate public school libraries and create curricula, the First Amendment imposes guardrails to ensure removals are justified.”
A mother of three children in the Defense Department’s schools said the executive orders removing the books were a “violation of our children’s right to access information that prevents them from learning about their own histories, bodies, and identities.”
President Trump issued an executive order in January that sought to end the “radical indoctrination” of children in K-12 schools.
“In many cases, innocent children are compelled to adopt identities as either victims or oppressors solely based on their skin color and other immutable characteristics,” the order said. “In other instances, young men and women are made to question whether they were born in the wrong body and whether to view their parents and their reality as enemies to be blamed.”
