
PEN America v. Escambia County School District
Protect Democracy represents PEN America in litigation challenging the constitutionality of book bans in Escambia County.
October 28, 2022
Counsel
Shalini Goel Agarwal serves as counsel at Protect Democracy working to combat anti-democratic disinformation through litigation and advocacy. Previously, she was a senior supervising attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center working on criminal justice reform and a staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida. Shalini clerked for Judge David S. Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and received her J.D. from U.C. Berkeley Law.
Protect Democracy represents PEN America in litigation challenging the constitutionality of book bans in Escambia County.
October 28, 2022
Shalini Goel Agarwal, a lawyer for the nonprofit group Protect Democracy, which is co-counsel for the plaintiffs, told me, “In Pico, the Supreme Court recognized that school libraries are places where students can explore new ideas and gain new understanding, and concluded that school boards may not remove books from library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas in those books.” She added, “That’s exactly what’s happening in Escambia County — books have been challenged as ‘LGBTQ content’ and promoting a ‘woke agenda,’ and the school board has overruled the judgment of its appointed review committees and ratified objections levied by a vocal minority.”
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