Re: Complaint Against Cobb County School District Pursuant to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

DC@ed.gov May 13, 2024 Re: Complaint Against Cobb County School District Pursuant to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 The National Women’s Law Center (“NWLC”) files this complaint against Cobb County School District (“CCSD”) in Georgia for its discriminatory censorship of books and learning materials that feature characters and authors of co. [...] Collectively, these policies aim to restrict students’ access to inclusive information, including by preventing teachers from assigning books, creating lessons, and facilitating dialogue reflective of the lives, histories, and experiences of people of color and LGBTQIA+ people, and limiting the ability of students to read books featuring people of color and LGBTQIA+ people as characters and author. [...] For example, at an October 19, 2023, school board meeting, a parent of a CCSD student warned the Board of the harm that would come to students as a result of accommodating Libs of TikTok’s request to remove Flamer and Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl. [...] While CCSD tried to pass the Fall 2023 removal off as innocuous and part of a “routine” process schools undertake to update out of date or damaged books and materials in libraries,45 the Fall 2023 removal was clearly part of CCSD’s larger scheme to inhibit students’ access to inclusive books and materials, as an overwhelming number of the books removed are among the most common books targeted for. [...] However, as students were lined up to speak in November 2020 at a school board meeting to demand that the Board take action to rename the high school, they were disappointed to learn that efforts to rename the high school had been halted by the Board majority, which voted at a November 19, 2020 school board meeting to dissolve the special committee.