The American Civil Liberties Union filed a legal motion May 7, 2025, on behalf of six families with students enrolled in Defense Department schools that seeks reinstatement of more than 200 books and other curricular materials. (Jasmine Vu)
A group of military families is seeking a court order forcing the immediate reinstatement of more than 200 books and other curricular materials removed from Defense Department schools as part of a Pentagon mandate.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion Wednesday for a preliminary injunction on behalf of six families with students enrolled in Department of Defense Education Activity schools.
They have a lawsuit pending against DODEA that accuses President Donald Trump’s administration of “system-wide censorship” in violation of their First Amendment rights.
“Despite the anxiety and uncertainty among DODEA parents and students right now, we know that our children have a right to an education free from censorship, and we won’t stand by silently and watch that right be taken away” Jessica Henninger, a plaintiff on behalf of her three children at schools at Fort Campbell, Ky. , said in an ACLU statement Wednesday.
In Wednesday’s filing, the families ask the court to bar the removal of books and curriculum based on what the government views as promoting gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology, as defined by executive orders issued earlier this year.
They also want a ruling issued to DODEA Director Beth Schiavino-Narvaez and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “to reinstate these books and curricula to school library shelves and classrooms,” according to the motion, filed in the federal court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Schiavino-Narvaez and Hegseth are also named in the ACLU lawsuit, which was filed last month on behalf of the same families.
The plaintiffs include 12 students from pre-K to 11th grade who attend DODEA schools as children of active-duty service members in Virginia, Kentucky, Italy and Japan.
DODEA “does not comment on active litigation to ensure the integrity of the legal process and to respect all parties involved,” the agency said last month in response to the complaint.
The new motion contains a list of 233 books that the plaintiffs say have been removed from circulation, including:
“To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee
“#MeToo: Women Speak Out Against Sexual Assault,” edited by The New York Times
“Looking for Alaska” by John Green
“Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation” by Jeff Chang
“Generation Brave: The Gen Z Kids who are Changing the World” by Kate Alexander
“Julian is a Mermaid” by Jessica Love.
It includes further titles by such authors as Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut and Ta-Nehisi Coates. The vast majority of titles appear to be by or about women, people of color or LGBTQ+ people, the ACLU stated.
DODEA has yet to release a list of books removed as part of an ongoing compliance review directed by the Pentagon in early February.
In documents filed Wednesday in support of the ACLU’s motion, parents describe repeated efforts to find out which books and curriculum topics have been shelved. Freedom of Information Act requests for such lists have so far gone unanswered, they say.
One of the plaintiffs on behalf of her three school-age children at Misawa Air Base, Japan, said the school librarian at Edgren Middle High School scolded her eighth grader for trying to check out books they’d heard were soon going to be removed.
Among them were “The Giver” by Lois Lowry, “1984” by George Orwell, “Ground Zero” by Alan Gratz and her daughter’s favorite book, “A Handmaid’s Tale,” by Atwood. All of those titles have since been removed, court filings state.
“Although I have not been able to verify all of the contents, I received a list of the books removed and have been able to confirm that at least some of the books on this list are no longer in the library,” the plaintiff stated in court papers.
For example, “No Truth Without Ruth: The Life of Ruth Bader Ginsberg” and “Finding Wonders: Three Girls Who Changed Science” were removed, according to the new complaint.
“These are age-appropriate books that teach children about prominent historical figures’ lives,” she said in court documents.
Another plaintiff on behalf of her two children who attend Crossroads Elementary School in Quantico, Va., described in court documents an exchange her active-duty husband had in his personal capacity with the district superintendent at a February school advisory meeting.
“He posed a specific hypothetical, asking whether DODEA would have to teach that the world was flat if it had been instructed to do so,” she said. The official “confirmed that there was virtually no academic independence from DOD guidance, even in the case of the hypothetical.”
