(NEW YORK)—PEN America has filed a “friend of the court” brief in support of military families challenging book bans and curricular restrictions in their schools. The Department of Defense Education Activity (“DoDEA”), which oversees 161 public schools for the civilian children of U.S. military service members, imposed the bans after the Trump Administration issued executive orders aimed at restricting learning and discussion about certain views on race and gender in certain federal settings, including the Department of Defense. This educational censorship is part of an ongoing campaign to eliminate materials containing viewpoints and experiences the Trump Administration disfavors related to race, sex, and gender in schools and universities.
The federal trial court in Virginia agreed with the families and ordered the Trump Administration to stop enforcing the restrictions on those schools attended by the plaintiffs while the lawsuit moved forward. That order is now on appeal, and PEN America’s brief, filed Wednesday in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, urges that the trial court order be affirmed.
The brief argues that the educational censorship in DoDEA schools and the executive orders on which they are based are part of a broader movement of educational censorship mandated by state legislatures that PEN America has documented since 2021. The suppression of classroom topics and books bans are designed to erase disfavored ideas about race, racism, and U.S. history, as well as LGBTQ+ identities. The brief also emphasizes that First Amendment case law on public education consistently affirms that students have a right to receive information free from partisan censorship.
Mara Gassmann, PEN America’s legal director, said: “Viewpoint discrimination is, as Justice Samuel Alito has rightly called it, ‘poison to a free society.’ While the government can make curriculum and library decisions based on reasonable pedagogical interests, DoDEA here has gone far beyond its power by acting with an improper motivation—censorship of disfavored views in our schools. The First Amendment protects public education from becoming a political football changing hands with every election cycle.”
PEN America has previously spoken out against educational censorship in DoDEA schools.
In October 2025, when the plaintiffs secured a preliminary injunction at the district court level, Kasey Meehan, Freedom to Read Director at PEN America, said: “The scale of book removals across schools for military families in response to edicts from the White House is a further escalation of the book banning crisis and comes on the heels of four years of coordinated efforts to suppress and restrict reading material for public school students nationwide. This ruling is a solid first step in a long road to restoring and protecting students’ freedom to read in schools run for military families, and we hope this decision will serve as useful precedent in other courts.”
PEN America has sounded the alarm on educational censorship since 2021 and has produced extensive research on the topic. PEN America has filed amicus briefs in federal courts contextualizing state-level book bans and curricular restrictions within the broader context of educational censorship around the country.
About PEN America
PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. A membership organization of writers and readers, our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. Learn more at pen.org.
Contact: Suzanne Trimel, [email protected]