“The school board’s claim of ‘inaccuracies’ is a guise and pretext for ‘political orthodoxy,’” wrote Judge Alan S. Gold. He cited as an example board member Frank Bolaños’s characterization of a passage in the Cuba title that reads “The people eat, work, and study like you” as a “distortion.” Emphasizing that “nothing written [in this court decision] is intended to cast doubt upon the heartfelt point of view expressed by Mr. Bolaños and his supporters,” Gold explained that “the real issue was that the Cuba books were content-neutral and scrupulously apolitical, and did not reflect, as viewed by the majority of the school board members, the true evil of Castro’s government and the oppression of the Cuban people.”
“It is regrettable that taxpayers’ dollars had to be used to prove in court what was so clear from the beginning,” said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, whose Greater Miami Chapter is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Posted July 28, 2006.