Florida students might be on summer break, but that hasn’t stopped the state’s top education officials from forcing school districts to remove library books from their shelves ― and threatening school employees with prosecution if they don’t.

After the board members of the Florida Department of Education interrogated a school district superintendent earlier this month about books the board didn’t approve of and claimed the district’s librarians were child abusers, other Florida schools rushed to remove the books in question prompting a fresh wave of book bans.

At that same meeting, the state board referred to a list of books that they had deemed to be “pornographic.” The more than 50 titles include novels by Judy Blume and George R.R. Martin, and a memoir by Jaycee Lee Duggard, a woman who had been kidnapped as a child and held captive for nearly 20 years.

“If you concede here and take their word that these 50 books are pornography, then you’ve allowed them to give orders about anything,” Stephana Farrell, the co-director of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, told HuffPost.

Florida has been on the forefront of the movement to ban books since the right-wing groups began organizing around parental rights. Under the guise of protecting children, conservative activists began taking over school boards, smearing teachers as indoctrinators, and objecting to books with LGBTQ+ content. For two school years in a row, the state has released a list of hundreds of books that officials deemed inappropriate.

According to PEN America, a nonprofit organization that spreads awareness on free expression, Florida leads the country in book banning with 4,500 titles removed in the 2023-24 school year alone.

The latest round of book removals were prompted by a letter Florida’s Education Commissioner, Manny Diaz, sent to Hillsborough County Public Schools alleging that the district had sexually explicit materials in its high schools.

Diaz wrote that while other schools had ensured that “pornographic” materials were removed from their schools, Hillsborough had not. It is the fourth-most populous county in the state, and contains the city of Tampa. “Hillsborough has failed to do this and continues to have pornographic and inappropriate books available to students,” Diaz said in the letter.

The letter then quoted several books that have been banned from other school districts in Florida, and informed Superintendent Van Ayres that his presence was expected at the June 4 state school board meeting. Ayres immediately removed the books mentioned in the letter as well as hundreds of other titles. But he was still subjected to interrogation by the state.

At the June 4 meeting, the board members hurled accusations at Ayres’ school district employees and suggested there be criminal charges.

“I want to provide caution to those individuals that are either on a board and trying to put pressure on a superintendent, or those individuals that are directly placing these items in the library,” Diaz said at the June meeting. “They could face [a] penalty under law and prosecution.”

Chairperson Ben Gibson mused about turning over librarians to the attorney general’s office. “I expect and hope that these books will be removed in the next two weeks,” he said. “If they’re not removed, then I’m going to ask the department and I’ll ask the attorney general to use every tool within their disposal to make sure that pornographic materials are not in our schools.”

“Have you considered firing all your media specialists and starting from scratch with women and men who can read, or have a single shred of decency?” Grazie Christie, one of the board members, told Ayres. “These people that you trust to review these materials are abusing the children of your county. They’re child abusers.”

In the aftermath, many Florida school districts began to pull books from their shelves.

The Florida Department of Education did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

Some school districts were in full agreement with the state. “No parent wants someone else to indoctrinate their child or introduce their child to obscene, pornographic, age-inappropriate content,” Kevin Adams, a school board member in Escambia County said at a meeting this month. The district removed 15 books.

St. John’s, Osceola and Santa Rosa Counties also removed books that were deemed inappropriate by the state. Tom Forson, the St. John’s County public schools superintendent, said that the school district would not add any books to the collection that weren’t approved by the state.

Other school boards didn’t agree that the list was inappropriate but were worried about facing consequences for not falling in line. “I think it would be perilous for this board to allow these books to remain on the shelves,” John Palmerini, a school board member in Orange County, said.

“It’s incredibly concerning to me,” Farrell said. “I have two kids in Orange County Public Schools. I don’t want my duly-elected school board member removed.”

For the past several years, the Florida legislature has rushed to pass anti-LGBTQ+ and pro-parental rights bills. Then, Attorney General James Uthmeier created the Office of Parental Rights in April, which has a portal where parents can submit complaints about a variety of issues at schools, including objections to library books.

“This first-in-the-nation office is a mechanism for parents and families to seek justice where local governments and school systems seek to ‘treat,’ indoctrinate, or collect data from students without parental involvement,” Uthmeier said in a press release. “This new initiative is another way we are making Florida the best place to raise a family.”

A few weeks later, Diaz announced that the state’s department of education would be partnering with the attorney general’s new parental rights initiative.

Even as some organizations and parents push back on the latest book removals, saying they rise to censorship, the Florida Department of Education is signaling that they don’t plan on backing down — and there could be more pressure campaigns.

“Hillsborough County is being turned into a cautionary tale,” William Johnson, the director of PEN America Florida, and Farrell said in a joint press release. “The message to other districts is clear: fall in line or face the consequences.”

On Tuesday night, the Escambia County school board went beyond removing the books on the latest list circulated by the FLDOE. The board voted unanimously to change its book review policy which allowed for a committee to review a book before it could be removed.

But now, the board has agreed to allow its superintendent to remove books as he sees fit — without any review.