St. Francis schools agree to settle lawsuits over book bans filed by ACLU, union
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ST. FRANCIS, Minnesota, June 10, 2025 – St. Francis Area Schools has agreed to return dozens of banned books to its libraries and classrooms to settle a lawsuit filed by Education Minnesota-St. Francis on behalf of eight students.
The district and the labor union agreed to terms after a mediation session on Monday. The school board accepted the settlement during its regular meeting Monday night. The district also settled a similar lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Minnesota.
In March, the union sued the district in Anoka County District Court on behalf of eight students, alleging the district was illegally banning books in libraries and classrooms based on the ideas, characters and stories they contained.
Education Minnesota-St. Francis President Ryan Fiereck said he was relieved the school board corrected the mistake it made in December when it decided to use a website affiliated with Moms for Liberty called booklooks.org as the final authority for which books could be available to students.
“We achieved this settlement because parents, students, our community and even Minnesota authors stood with educators to defend the freedom to read in public schools,” he said. “The students’ stories and commitment to fixing this terrible policy were particularly inspiring.”
The new books policy for St. Francis schools will include community input and the recommendations of trained school librarians, Fiereck said. “This is progress, but not the end. It is on us, as voters, to ensure school boards and other elected leaders support public schools in ways that foster creativity, exploration, learning from our history, and critical thinking. These are the pillars of public education, and they are under attack.”
Under the terms of the settlement:
- The district will replace the booklooks.org policy with a policy that guarantees the input of the parents and qualified media specialists and follows state law.
- The review committee for challenged books can only remove a book with a supermajority vote.
- The school board can only overrule the review committee and remove a book after publishing a report of its findings and then acting in a public meeting.
- District staff will return all the books removed under the previous policy to media centers and classroom libraries.
- The new book review policy must remain in place for at least three years.
- The district will pay the mediator.
The union has agreed to drop its lawsuit and did not seek financial damages.
In late March, PEN America, Authors Against Book Bans, Education Minnesota, the Minnesota ACLU and other groups joined with more than 300 members of the St. Francis community to protest at a school board meeting, demanding changes to what PEN America called one of the most restrictive and rigid book bans in American schools. Community members presented letters from the authors of banned books to the school board, including from Ashley Hope Perez, Jodi Picoult, Ellen Hopkins, Anne Ursu and Khaled Hosseini.
The St. Francis School Board passed a policy in December to delegate control over which books may be offered in the school libraries or purchased by the district to the website Booklooks.org, which has subsequently shut down. The policy was approved against the recommendations of the district superintendent and attorney.
The site assigned ratings by anonymous reviewers to novels based on secret criteria. In St. Francis, novels with a rating of three or higher were removed from the high school library with no local review or appeal after a complaint was filed. Books with LGBTQ+ characters, BIPOC characters or books that contain what the site called “inflammatory religious commentary” were rated as less appropriate.
More than 30 books were removed from the shelves, including such classics as “The Bluest Eye,” “Beloved,” “The Kite Runner,” “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Brave New World,” “The Handmaid’s Tale” and the Holocaust memoir “Night” by Eli Wiesel, a Nobel Prize winner.
About Education Minnesota
Education Minnesota is the voice for professional educators and students. Education Minnesota’s members include teachers and education support professionals in Minnesota’s public school districts, faculty members at Minnesota’s community and technical colleges and University of Minnesota campuses in Duluth and Crookston, retired educators and student teachers. Education Minnesota is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association and AFL-CIO.
