Five largest English-language publishers sued the Florida State Board of Education on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida over a state statute that requires the removal of books depicting "sexual conduct" from school libraries and classrooms.

The plaintiffs, Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishing Group, Simon & Schuster, Sourcebooks and writers including John Green and Jodi Picoult, filed the complaint over books, such as Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man; Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls; Alice Walker's the Color Purple; and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.