October 22 2025, 08:15 
The Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) – which runs schools for more than 67,000 military-connected children – violated students’ First Amendment rights when it removed books and censored curricula related to race and gender in its schools, a federal judge ruled on Monday.
U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles’s October 20 decision grants a preliminary injunction sought by 12 students who attend DoDEA schools, blocking the agency from enforcing three of President Donald Trump’s anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-DEI executive orders and requiring schools to return nearly 600 books to classroom and library shelves while the case proceeds.
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In April, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Kentucky, and the ACLU of Virginia filed a complaint on behalf of the 12 students and their families challenging DoDEA’s removal of books from its schools’ classrooms and libraries in response to Trump’s executive orders 14168, 14185, and 14190.
The orders, according to the complaint, resulted in DoDEA’s censorship of age-appropriate curricula on race and gender, and its removal of materials that reference slavery, civil rights, race, ethnicity, immigration, diversity, sexual orientation, and gender identity in violation of students’ First Amendment rights. The complaint named DoDEA director Beth Schiavino-Narvaez and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as defendants.
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According to the ACLU, books “quarantined” by DoDEA schools included classics like To
Lawyers for the DOD reportedly argued that the removals constituted “government speech” and thus were shielded from First Amendment scrutiny. But Giles rejected that characterization, writing that it conflicts with school libraries’ purpose as sites of academic freedom and warning that such a characterization would be “dangerous” for intellectual freedom.
Giles agreed with plaintiffs that DoDEA’s censorship caused real harm to students, and wrote that the agency’s actions likely constituted viewpoint discrimination, according to The Advocate.
While the preliminary injunction only applies to the five schools attended by the plaintiffs, the ACLU notes that Giles’s ruling sends a clear message that DoDEA’s censorship is unconstitutional.
In a statement, Emerson Sykes, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, called the ruling an important victory for DoDEA students. “The censorship taking place in DoDEA schools as a result of these executive orders was astonishing in its scope and scale, and we couldn’t be more pleased that the court has vindicated the First Amendment rights of the students this has impacted.”
“By quarantining library books and whitewashing curricula in its civilian schools, the Department of Defense Education Activity violated students’ First Amendment rights,” ACLU of Virginia senior supervising attorney Matt Callahan said. “Today’s ruling affirms that 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.”
“Removing books from school libraries just because this administration doesn’t like the content is censorship, plain and simple,” said Corey Shapiro, legal director for the ACLU of Kentucky. “The materials removed are clearly age-appropriate and are only offensive to those who are afraid of a free-thinking population.”
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