Moms For Liberty Sics The Cops On Florida School Librarians: Video

MILTON, FL — Two Floridians active in the far-right Moms for Liberty group recently asked police to investigate a pair of school librarians for the failure to ban a popular young adult series they say exposes minors to pornography in violation of Florida law.

“I’ve got some evidence a crime was committed,” Jennifer Tapley, a member of the Santa Rosa County chapter of the group and a 2024 school board candidate, said in an Oct. 25 interview with the local sheriff’s department, according to audio and video obtained through a public records request by Judd Legum for Popular Information on Substack.

“Pornography given to a minor in a school,” said Tapley, who was accompanied to the sheriff’s office by another Moms for Liberty member, Tom Gurski. “And I would like to make a report with somebody and turn over the evidence.”

The evidence, in this case, is “Storm and Fury,” a novel in the young adult fantasy series by Jennifer L. Armentrout, checked out by a 17-year-old “minor” from Jay High School.

“The governor says this is child pornography,” said Tapley, who was also accompanied by a young girl to the sheriff’s office. “It’s a serious crime,” she said, “just as serious as if I handed Playboy to her right now, right here, in front of you.”

Involving police is an amplification of tactics used by Moms for Liberty, a “parental rights” group that made inroads in taking over school boards in multiple states and has inflamed meetings with aggressive complaints about classroom instruction on systemic racism and gender identity.

The sheriff’s department chose not to get involved and instead referred any investigation to the Santa Rosa County Schools director of safety, reportedly without interviewing the school librarians.

And it wasn’t the first time Moms for Liberty members have asked cops to investigate librarians for alleged violations of the Florida law, backed and signed last year by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Gurski told police he filed a report with the Milton Police Department over the school’s failure to remove Rachel Cohn and David Levithan’s “Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List,” which has an LGBTQ+ character.

Video obtained by Popular Information on Substack

DeSantis, a leading Republican presidential contender, backed and signed Florida’s book ban law, which provides that classroom libraries must be “free of pornography” and contain material “suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented” and “appropriate for the grade level and age group.”

To be banned, the book must be “harmful to minors,” the standard established by the U.S. Supreme Court. Under Florida law, that means content that predominantly “appeals to prurient, shameful and morbid interest” and is “patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material or conduct for minors.”

All public school educators in Florida face a third-degree felony if they violate the law.

‘A Fictional Book Involving Gargoyles’

“Storm and Fury,” the book at issue in the current request for a full-blown criminal investigation, centers around 18-year-old Trinity, who is going blind and communicates with ghosts and spirits.

Armentrout, the author, told Popular Information she was surprised to learn she is “living in an era where, apparently, some adults find it appropriate to contact the police over a fictional book involving gargoyles.”

The book does have some sexual themes, including a reference to a make-out session and a time when one of the main characters almost has sex, but Armentrout said her goal was not to “incite sexual excitement.”

• Related: Steve Martin ‘So Proud’ Florida School District Banned His Book

She said “Storm and Fury” is personally important to her, as the main character has the same degenerative eye disease, retinitis pigmentosalmas, I do.”

Her purpose in writing the book was “to educate people on a little-known disease in a fun, suspenseful, and adventurous way,” she told Popular Information.

Several groups have put “Storm and Fury” on recommended reading lists, including the Florida Association of Media in Education, a professional association of Florida librarians; bookseller Barnes & Noble, which recommends it for teens 14-18; and the School Library Journal.

In her complaint to the sheriff’s office, Tapley targeted the Jay High School librarian who did not, as required by law, remove the book for review when it was challenged for sexual content, and the head librarian for the county, Ruth Witter. The book does not appear to be on the list of challenged books for Santa Rosa County.

“To see the orchestrated campaign to remove books from schools escalate to a police station is shocking,” Kasey Meehan, a director at the free expression advocacy group PEN America, told Popular Information. “Professional librarians apply sensible measures to curate their collections for diverse audiences of readers, and they should not be punished for making knowledge accessible to students that falls well short of the well-established legal standards for obscene materials.”

Stephana Ferrell, of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, told Public Information that Moms for Liberty members in Santa Rosa County are trying to “bully the district into sacrificing access to protected speech”

Who Are Moms For Liberty?

Still a fledgling group, Moms for Liberty was co-founded in 2021 by three Florida moms (one has since dropped out) in response to COVID-19 restrictions, but has since established chapters in all 50 states and gained sway within Republican politics. The group expects to be a major force in the 2024 election cycle, from school board races all the way to the race for the White House.

Labeling Moms for Liberty an “extremist” group, the Southern Poverty Law Center said the organization’s chapters “combat what they consider the ‘woke indoctrination’ of children by advocating for book bans in school libraries and endorsing candidates for public office that align with the group's views,” the SPLC said.

“They also use their multiple social media platforms to target teachers and school officials, advocate for the abolition of the Department of Education, advance a conspiracy propaganda, and spread hateful imagery and rhetoric against the LGBTQ community,” the SPLC said.

Cofounder Tiffany Justice, said during its annual summit over the weekend in Philadelphia that Moms for Liberty will use its political action committee next year to engage in school board races nationwide. It also will “start endorsing at the state board level and elected superintendents.”

In an interview with The Associated Press, Justice and cofounder Tina Descovich said they were just two moms who “had faith in American parents to take back the public education system in America” and that they “fully intend on reclaiming and reforming” that system.

Florida Has Company

At least seven other states have taken up legislation that could subject librarians to tens of thousands of dollars in fines or years of imprisonment for making “harmful” books available to children, according to an analysis earlier this year by The Washington Post.

Governors in Idaho and North Dakota vetoed legislation in their sates. Another dozen states considered similar bills, and half of them are likely to come up again in 2024, The Post found.

Most of the legislation targets school librarians. An Arkansas measure carrying penalties of up to six years in prison and a $10,000 applies to public librarians and teachers as well.

The laws contribute to a climate of fear among school librarians, Keith Gambill, president of the teachers union in Indiana, one of the states with new obscenity laws, told The Post.

“It will make sure the only literature students are exposed to fits into a narrow scope of what some people want the world to look like,” he said, “This is my 37th year in education. I’ve never seen anything like this. … We are entering a very frightening period.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting