But no books are banned. The government is allowed to set school curriculum in every other case, so why not this one? If you don't like government school rules set by the government, then who gets to set them? I don't think you have a good answer to this.

You are dancing around the fact that someone has to decide what books go in the library. Who should that person be? Seems to me that it should be the owner of the library in question, which in this case is the state whose budget and laws are controlled by the legislature.

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epistasis 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> The government is allowed to set school curriculum in every other case, so why not this one? If you don't like government school rules set by the government, then who gets to set them? I don't think you have a good answer to this.

There is a very very good answer here: the constitution.

You are not even responding to the constitutionality claim here, and have refused to even acknowledge the core aspect of this entire case! It seems a bit rude to say "you don't have an answer" when you ignore the point again and again.

The government can set laws, curriculum, etc. But it must be in accordance with the constitution.

It seems that in the last year or so, many people think that the government can do whatever it wants, that there's no constitution, that there's no limits on government power. This is fundamentally anti-American, and against everything that the entire country was founded on.

> You are dancing around the fact that someone has to decide what books go in the library.

I'm not dancing around that fact at all. It's a government employee, the school librarian. Guess what, government employees are also subject to restrictions in how they act, as set by the constitution and other laws. When the "other laws" conflict with the constitution, like the one that's the subject of this post, the constitution wins.

Budgetary power is not the ultimate law of the land, it's the constitution. This also seems to have been forgotten in the past year.

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nozzlegear 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> You are dancing around the fact that someone has to decide what books go in the library. Who should that person be?

It's the school librarian, who purchases books from their vendor lists. Depending on the school, the school board might vote to put a selection policy in place for the librarian. A few states publish a recommended or approved list of books that the librarian chooses from.

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terminalshort 3 days ago | parent [-]

That may be your preference as to how it should be done, and I see no problem with that. But if your approach is constitutional, so is Florida's. The librarian is an agent of the same government that is controlled by the legislature. If he can decide what books get in and which don't, so can the legislature.

> A few states publish a recommended or approved list of books that the librarian chooses from.

Well isn't that exactly what FL did?

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nozzlegear 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Well isn't that exactly what FL did?

I'm not saying I agree with it, just listing all of the methods of selection (that I'm aware of) for accuracy. Personally I prefer the school board approach, so that the community can assert local control over the process rather than politicians trying to score points with national parties.

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dfxm12 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> A few states publish a recommended or approved list of books that the librarian chooses from.

Well isn't that exactly what FL did?

No.

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terminalshort 3 days ago | parent [-]

if (!banned_books.contains(book) { library.add(book) }

if (allowed_books.contains(book) { library.add(book) }

It's the same. (Well, not quite. Yours is much more restrictive.)

	▲	didibus 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Banning the books takes a stance against the books themselves. It's like an attack to the speech of the authors by the government. The government is openly opposing and calling them obscene. Simply recommending or mandating that a particular set of books should be made available is very different, that's in line with the role they should play here, which is to make sure that a good selection of books for pedagogy is made available to students. What's funny is, the "banned books" might have not even been available in any of the libraries to begin with. That shows the distinction. And finally, even the set of books they make available, it should reasonably look like an effort was made to select them based on an objective criteria of offering the best education. If it starts to feel like it wasn't done so in good faith, it's leaning on propaganda. The librarian, school board, governor, this applies to all of them, it's not their own personal selection of what they want the kids to learn. It's a set of books of their good faith effort at objectively offering the material that benefits the kids education best.

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ModernMech 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

For these kinds of matters we we tend to set community-approved guidelines and then allow the community to enforce them. This is because we trust our community to best uphold the standards of the community.

What's being done here is a top-down effort by certain political forces to insert themselves into this community-lead governance. They don't want the community to set local standards; they would rather those standards be dictated by the governor, or by some party-approved commission appointed by him.

> Who should that person be? Seems to me that it should be the owner of the library in question

Agreed, but Republicans think this person should be the governor of the state, and Democrats think this person should be someone local from the community. Ironically, it's Republicans who are styled as the party of small government.

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terminalshort 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

What you are saying makes sense, but I am only commenting on this in relation to freedom of speech. The government is the government whether it is local or state. So in terms of freedom of speech this is the same thing. In terms of the constitution, local governments are completely subject to the authority of the state government. There is no sharing of power like at the federal/state level.

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ModernMech 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think it all has to do with impact. The point of the first amendment is so that the government cannot create policy to chill speech it doesn't like. That's why we all appreciate it.

A small branch library making autonomous choices about what books to store behind its walls with backing of the local community doesn't stand to chill speech across the state or nation, so the first amendment protection to free speech isn't really implicated. If some podunk town doesn't want to put books about trans kids on the shelves, that's not going to chill speech about trans people across the state or nation.

But when the governor sets policy that no libraries shall have books about trans people, then that's going to chill speech and the first amendment is implicated. Therefore it's unconstitutional, despite flowing from the same derived power source. That's my view anyway, I'm not a lawyer.

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epistasis 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A law must abide by the constitution.

Community norms are not laws, and are much more flexible, have no government enforcement mechanisms, and don't have the weight of the legal system behind them.

These are very different things when it comes to freedom of speech!

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Levitz 3 days ago | parent [-]

That looks like the mother of all slippery slopes to me. I'd be very, very careful around the idea that some workers of the government don't have to abide by the constitution.

	▲	epistasis 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I'm confused, who here is saying that some workers of the government don't have to abide by the constitution? Certainly I have never said that!

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mindslight 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

"I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to increase it to the size where it can go into your bathroom and drown you in the bathtub" - Grover Norquist, via translation from effective results.