The Department of Defense was sued on Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), multiple military students, and the family members of military students over various book bans and curriculum changes implemented amid President Donald Trump’s effort to remove diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from the federal government and America’s military institutions.
The lawsuit, which was filed in the district court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Tuesday, states, “The Department of Defense Education Activity (‘DoDEA’) 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.”
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, including 12 students from six different families at military schools in Italy, Japan, Virginia, and Kentucky, argued that the recent removal of books and curriculum at the military schools is a violation of the students’ “First Amendment right to receive information.”
The lawsuit added, “Plaintiffs bring this First Amendment lawsuit to challenge the Department of Defense’s ongoing and unconstitutional removal of books from their school libraries and suppression of topics and educational materials in their curricula.”
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According to the ACLU, the Defense Department’s school system, which includes 161 schools throughout the United States and in multiple other countries, has “systemically removed books, altered curricula, and canceled events that the government has accused of promoting ‘gender ideology’ or ‘divisive equity ideology.’”
The ACLU claimed that the Defense Department has banned textbooks that discuss LGBTQ+ information, Native American history, slavery, and the prevention of sexual harassment.
Emerson Sykes, an ACLU senior staff attorney, said, “These schools are some of the most diverse and high achieving in the nation, making it particularly insulting to strip their shelves of diverse books and erase women, LGBTQ people and people of color from the curriculum to serve a political goal.”
Sykes added, “Our clients deserve better, and the First Amendment demands it.”
According to Military Times, Tuesday’s lawsuit against the Trump administration’s Defense Department is pushing for the president’s executive orders to be revoked and for the banned books and curriculum to be reinstated in the department’s military schools.
Matt Callahan, an ACLU senior supervising attorney, claimed, “The government can’t scrub references to race and gender from public school libraries and classrooms just because the Trump administration doesn’t like certain viewpoints on those topics.”
© American Military News
