Appeals Court Splits Verdict on School District’s Sunshine Violations in Library Books Case

An appeals court Wednesday said an Indian River County School Board textbook committee violated the state’s open-government Sunshine Law but a committee that reviewed school library books did not.

The ruling by a panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal came in a lawsuit filed by Florida Citizens Alliance Inc. about a social-studies textbook committee that began meeting in 2016 and a library committee that met in late 2021 and early 2022. The ruling said the library committee, for example, “reviewed the books to determine whether they violated Florida’s pornography statutes and had ‘serious literary merit.’” The allegations involved whether public meetings were properly held.




Both committees made recommendations to the school board. But the appeals court drew a distinction between the committees because it said the textbook committee had “decision-making authority” but that the library committee did not.

“A key factor distinguishing the library committee’s ‘recommendations’ from the textbook committee’s ‘recommendations’ is that the library committee did not winnow down the number of books before sending its recommendations to the School Board for review,” said the ruling, written by Judge Jeffrey Kuntz and joined by Judges Jonathan Gerber and Burton Conner.

“Every challenged book reviewed by the library committee was submitted to the School Board for the School Board’s final decision. The textbook committee, by contrast, submitted only its recommended textbooks to the School Board for its review and approval; the unrecommended textbooks were not presented. This demonstrates that no aspect of the decisionmaking authority was delegated to the library committee — the School Board retained all authority.

The record suggests the School Board exercised that authority too, with members reading individual books and researching others. As a result, the library committee was not given decision-making authority and was not subject to the Sunshine Law.” The Florida Citizens Alliance appealed after a circuit judge sided with the school board on both issues.

–News Service of Florida