Two lawsuits were filed Monday against St. Francis Area School District over its book banning policy.

The ACLU of Minnesota and Lockridge Grindal Nauen PLLP filed one of the two lawsuits on behalf of two parents of children in the school district to end the “illegal banning of books from the district’s school libraries and classrooms.” 

The lawsuit is in response to the district’s recent policy change that removed librarians and teachers from the book approval process and replaced them with a website called “Book Looks,” founded by Moms for Liberty, a group that has been at the forefront of the conservative movement targeting books that reference race and sexuality.

The website rates books on a scale of zero to five, with zero being “for everyone” and five being “aberrant.” St. Francis banned books with a rating of three and above, according to the ACLU. If a book is already in the library and has a rating of three or above and is challenged, policy dictates that the book must be removed.

Since the policy change, the lawsuit claims at least 46 books were removed or are in the process of being removed from St. Francis schools.

Education Minnesota-St. Francis also filed a separate lawsuit over the book ban on behalf of eight students in the district whose parents are teachers.

That lawsuit claims the district’s policy is “antithetical to the values of public education and encouraging discourse.”

Both lawsuits allege the policy violates the Minnesota Constitution and state law, saying school districts cannot discriminate against viewpoints expressed in books and that it violates the right to free speech and to receive information, as well as the right to a uniform and adequate education.

“The Book Looks rating system that is now binding upon the school district discriminates extensively based on viewpoint, particularly with regard to topics of gender, race, and religion,” the lawsuit said.

The teachers’ union says the Holocaust memoir “Night” by Elie Wiesel is set to be removed after a recent complaint.

On Sunday, Book Looks announced it was ceasing operations and taking all reports down from its website.

“Our charge was always to help inform parents and it would appear that mission has been largely accomplished. We pray that publishers will take up the torch and be more transparent regarding explicit content in their books so that there will be no need for a BookLooks.org in the future,” an announcement posted to the website says.

St. Francis Area Schools says its legal team is reviewing documents from both lawsuits and determining next steps.

About 4,100 students attend the school district.

That eight-game winning streak now feels like decades ago.

The team Minnesota has been over the past week looks nothing like a crew that could reel off so many wins in succession, or contend for anything of consequence in the playoffs, should it even get there.

No, the panic meter needle shouldn’t tilt that far to the right at this point, but Minnesota’s 119-103 loss to the Pacers in Indiana raised some major red flags.

The Timberwolves’ typically potent defense was rendered irrelevant by Indiana’s pace. The Pacers played with a pace and rhythm in the transition and halfcourt that didn’t allow Minnesota to sink its teeth in physically and bother Indiana in any way. The Pacers shot 48% from the field, with 30 assists on their 46 buckets.

Frankly, it was Indiana’s defensive physicality — something for which the Pacers are not traditionally known — that bothered Minnesota.

The Wolves committed 17 turnovers while shooting 27% from distance.

“It was kind of a funky, off performance all around,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch told reporters.

Anthony Edwards was a gametime decision with a hand laceration. He played, but not well. The guard, who was piping hot from beyond the arc for the first half of the season, has not been since the calendar flipped to February. That trend continued Monday, as the guard went 1 for 11 from 3-point range.

Minnesota was outscored by 24 points in Edwards’ 34 minutes. The next worst plus-minus on the team belonged to Nickeil Alexander-Walker, who was a minus-13.

Edwards settled for threes on a night where he was successful inside the arc, going 6 for 8 on two-point attempts. That was the story of the game for Minnesota, who settled for a number of bad shot attempts against a defense that it traditionally could pick its attempt against.

“I thought we could’ve gone to the hoop a lot more than we did. They were pretty physical on the ball and we needed to with the ball and at the point of attack offensively, and we were never able to do that,” Finch said. “We didn’t have any composure. We were wild tonight offensively, whether that was wild with the ball or wild with our shot selection. Every time we had a chance to tighten up the game, or did tighten up the game, we’d get a stop, come down, take kind of a rushed three in transition.”

Minnesota fell to Indiana’s skeleton squad last week in overtime at Target Center, a night in which Obi Toppin had 34 points while shooting 7 for 10 from distance. Indiana was near full strength Monday, but it was still the same Toppin. The forward buried six triples in the win. But he had more help this time around. Indiana star guard Tyrese Haliburton had 24 points and 11 assists.

Whatever Indiana wanted to do, it did with relative ease.

“I think our offense is bothering our defense a little bit too much,” Finch said. “That’s something that’s reared it’s head at times for us. We’ve got to get back to guarding at a high level like we were doing.”

The Wolves have now lost three of four games. And while the fight for a top-six seed to avoid the play-in tournament rages on — Minnesota, currently in eighth in the West, is a full game back of Golden State for the No. 6 seed, and two back in the loss column — the Wolves are torpedoing their chances with their current run of poor play.

Starting Monday, burning restrictions are in place across more than a dozen Minnesota counties, including several in the Twin Cities metro.

The restrictions apply to Anoka, Benton, Chisago, Hennepin, Isanti, Kanabec, Mille Lacs, Morrison, Pine, Ramsey, Sherburne, Stearns, Todd, Washington and Wright counties.

Karen Harrison, a wildlife prevention specialist for the Department of Natural Resources, says dry conditions are causing higher risk of wildfires.

“Minnesotans make a big difference. 90 percent of our wildfires are caused by people and often they’re unintentional,” Harrison said. “And so that means that people can take steps to reduce the chances of wildfire starting.”

Harrison encourages residents to use alternative methods of disposing yard waste instead of burning such as composting, chipping or taking brush to a collection site.

She said restrictions are usually removed by the end of spring.