Book Banning In The United States (2021–present)

Starting in 2021, there have been thousands of books banned or challenged in parts of the United States. Most of the targeted books have to do with race, gender, and sexuality. Unlike most book challenges in the past, whereby action began locally with parents or other stakeholders in the community engaging teachers and school administrators in a debate over a title, local parent groups have received support from conservative advocacy organizations working to nationalize the efforts focused on certain subjects. They have also been more likely to involve legal and legislative measures rather than just conversations in local communities. Journalists, academics, librarians, and others commonly link the coordinated, often well-funded book challenges to other efforts to restrict what students should learn about systemic bias and the history of the United States. Hundreds of books have been challenged, including high-profile examples like ''Maus'' by Art Spiegelman, '' New Kid'' by Jerry Craft, and '' The Handmaid’s Tale'' by Margaret Atwood.

The American Library Association documented 1,269 demands of book censorship in 2022. It was the highest the organization had ever recorded since it began collecting censorship data more than 20 years prior. A 2023 analysis by ''The Washington Post'' found that a majority of book challenges in over 100 school districts from the 2021–2022 school year were filed by just 11 people.

2023 was even higher, with 4,240 different book titles challenged nationwide, as part of 1,247 reported requests filed against books, and other library resources, such as educational research databases. This represented an 11% increase in titles targeted at school libraries, and a 92% increase in the number of titles targeted at public libraries, compared to 2022.

The ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom released preliminary data for 2024, stating, "Between January 1 and August 31, 2024, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 414 attempts to censor library materials and services. In those cases, 1,128 unique titles were challenged. In the same reporting period last year, ALA tracked 695 attempts with 1,915 unique titles challenged. Though the number of reports to date has declined in 2024, the number of documented attempts to censor books continues to far exceed the numbers prior to 2020."

According to a survey by PEN America, about 10,000 books were banned from US schools under Republican-led censorship laws in the 2023/2024 academic year, nearly tripling the number for the previous academic year. Many of the book titles targeted dealt with BIPOC and LGBTQ issues. The book bans are largely the result of laws passed in Republican-led states. On January 24, 2025, the Trump Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights dismissed 11 cases regarding challenged books in schools and eliminated an oversight position for investigating such issues. They then issued a press release stating that they had ended what they referred to as "Biden's Book Ban Hoax".

Free speech advocates, academics, journalists, and other critics have characterized the escalation in book banning campaigns as part of a larger effort at local and state levels to impose an ideologically skewed vision of the United States, its history, and its culture. In response to challenges, book banning laws such as Arkansas Act 372 have been struck down in court as unconstitutional.

Background and scope

In fall 2021, the American Library Association (ALA) received 330 reports of book challenges, a rate which it called "unprecedented", but also an undercount because the ALA estimates 82–97% of challenges are not reported. Only 1% of the challenges were initiated by students, and most were by parents or library patrons. ''The New York Times'' reported in January 2022 that "parents, activists, school board officials and lawmakers around the country are challenging books at a pace not seen in decades". In April 2022, nonprofit organization PEN America found that 1,586 book bans targeting 1,145 unique books had occurred in the past nine months. Also in April, the ALA published its annual report on book censorship, finding that there were 729 attempts to remove school, university and library materials in 2021, resulting in 1,597 book challenges or removals. This is the highest number of removals and challenges of books that the ALA has recorded in a single year since the organization began tracking book censorship more than 20 years ago. In the first eight months of 2022, the ALA received 681 reports of book challenges targeting 1,651 unique books. Most of the books have to do with race, sex, sexual orientation, and gender.

Parents, teachers, students, and other stakeholders commonly express concerns over the works students read in schools. Typically, the process of challenging a book's inclusion in curricula or in libraries involves the parties reading the book, debating its appropriateness, and making a decision at the level of a teacher, class, school, or district. The spate of challenges and bans in 2021–22 differ from the norm in number as well as the tactics and politics involved. Conservative organizations, activists, and politicians have driven many of the challenges, and they have operated through higher-level political processes than usual, proposing legislation and petitioning lawmakers rather than just teachers or local school boards.

The involvement of national advocacy groups also sets the 2021–22 trend apart from book challenges of the past. Organizations like No Left Turn in Education and Parents Defending Education operate nationally, with connections to wealthy conservative donors and organizations, but provide resources, connections, and sophisticated strategy to grow, support, and mobilize local parent groups. According to NBC News, as of June 2021, there were "at least 165 local and national groups that aim to disrupt lessons on race and gender". Several of the challenges have begun with lists of books shared online by conservative advocacy organizations like No Left Turn in Education and Moms for Liberty. The lists are distributed to parents who then audit local schools and libraries to see if they have any copies of the listed titles. No Left Turn in Education, for example, maintains lists of books in categories "critical race theory", "anti-police", and "comprehensive sexuality education", which they say "are used to spread radical and racist ideologies to students". The strategy of distributing lists has meant that many challenges come from people who have not actually read the books they argue to ban.

NBC News reported that while these groups operate differently, "they share strategies of disruption, publicity and mobilization. The groups swarm school board meetings, inundate districts with time-consuming public records requests and file lawsuits and federal complaints alleging discrimination against white students." One parent in Rhode Island submitted more than 200 records requests which took 300 staff hours to respond to. In some places, they teamed up with other activists fighting against public health restrictions in schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. The groups have also been successful in attracting attention in conservative media. According to University of Massachusetts political science professor Maurice T. Cunningham, the parents' rights groups are "highly networked into '' The Daily Caller'', ''Breitbart'' nd''Fox News''".

In 2020, the murder of George Floyd and other unarmed Black Americans by law enforcement led to widespread protests against police brutality and systemic racism. The public conversation about these concepts led some teachers and schools to talk about racism more with their students. That, and the Black Lives Matter movement in general, also fueled a conservative backlash advocating for teaching students an idealized version of the history of the United States which omits or whitewashes issues like racism. The book challenge trend is frequently linked by journalists and academics to other elements of that reactionary movement, especially the restrictions on teaching "critical race theory" which limit the extent to which students can learn about systemic racism and the history of race in the United States. Legislation was introduced or passed in at least 29 states taking aim at lessons that teach children about race and inequality, with most of the laws framed around putting a stop to "critical race theory". These laws, which use broad language prohibiting teaching about privilege related to race or sex, or systemic bias in the United States, have led to many book removals. NBC News described the use of the term "critical race theory" in this context as "a catch-all term to refer to what schools often call equity programs, teaching about racism or LGBTQ-inclusive policies". University of Michigan education professor Ebony Elizabeth Thomas summarized the issue as "an assumption that everything Black is critical race theory".

Proponents of removing books mention how certain kinds of lessons dealing with racism and history can make students uncomfortable and make white students feel guilty. In some other cases, the books have been by or about people of color or the LGBTQ community, but the reasons cited for removal have to do with profanity or sex. For example, '' The Hate U Give'' by Angie Thomas is about a black girl from a poor neighborhood who attends an elite, predominantly white private school and becomes entangled in a national news story after she witnesses a white police officer kill her childhood friend. It has been among the most challenged books primarily because it contains profanity.

According to Richard Price, a professor at Weber State University who studies book censorship, there is a "cycle of anxiety in which book challengers are driven by concerns and fears about a changing world. And so whatever the issue of the day is, then that usually drives and pushes people to try to remove books". Before the focus on critical race theory in 2020, the most commonly banned books had to do with LGBTQ inclusion. In her ''Washington Post'' analysis, Valerie Strauss contextualized the bans in the history of book censorship in the United States, dating back to charges of blasphemy in 1650 against William Pynchon's ''The Meritorious Price on Our Redemption'', and spanning ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'', and the Harry Potter books, which were the most challenged books between 2000 and 2009. Strauss and education historian Adam Laats connected the trend to challenges of Darwin's ''On the Origin of Species'' and evolution in schools in the early 20th century which, according to Laats, involved similar strategies of mobilizing parents to take over school boards and widescale legislative proposals claiming to defend children's morality.

In late 2022 and early 2023, efforts escalated into proposals by public officials in several states to close libraries or defund library systems that were seen as facilitating the availability of objected books.

A 2023 analysis by ''The Washington Post'' found that a majority of book challenges in over 100 school districts from the 2021–2022 school year were filed by just 11 people. Based on a survey by PEN, about 10,000 books were banned from US schools by Republican-led censorship laws in the 2023/2024 academic year. This was nearly triple the amount of the previous academic year, which had also seen a record level of bans.

On January 24, 2025, the Trump Department of Education made a press release stating that they had ended "Biden's Book Ban Hoax" and that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights had dismissed 11 cases regarding challenged books in schools. They also eliminated the position of the book ban coordinator responsible for investigating school districts accused of censorship.

Reactions

Free speech advocates, academics, journalists, and other critics have characterized the campaigns as part of a larger effort to use politics and legislation at the local and state level to impose on education an ideologically skewed version of the United States, its history, and its culture. ''The Takeaway'''s Melissa Harris-Perry cited discomfort with issues like gender identity as one of the common reasons for challenges, but that "this discomfort is likely imposed by adults onto young learners" who are otherwise more accepting and more likely to think outside traditional gender roles. Shauntee Burns-Simpson of the New York Public Library highlighted the issue of taking one page or one quote from a book without context and making a decision about the value of a book based on an initial reaction to that quote. Burns-Simpson also noted that banning the book does not just take away the words in the book, but the possibility for conversation about the concepts it raises.

The American Library Association released a statement signed by its executive board and Boards of Directors of its eight divisions in response to "a dramatic uptick in book challenges and outright removal of books from libraries". Their message condemned "a few organizations hichhave advanced the proposition that the voices of the marginalized have no place on library shelves... falsely claiming that these works are subversive, immoral, or worse nd inducingofficials to abandon constitutional principles, ignore the rule of law, and disregard individual rights to promote government censorship of library collections". A spokesperson told ABC News that in her time working with reports of book challenges, she had "never seen such a widespread effort to remove books on racial and gender diversity".

A spokesperson for the National Coalition Against Censorship said the events were "damaging to all stakeholders", including teachers who must comply, learners who do not read stories that reflect the world around them, and students from the marginalized groups depicted in the stories, who learn "that their own stories and their own lives aren't fit for consumption". As a response to the increasing number of book bans and challenges targeting LGBT materials, the Queer Liberation Library formed in 2023 to provide digital access for anyone residing in the United States.

At a White House event honoring educators on April 24, 2023, President Joe Biden commented, "I never thought I’d be a president who is fighting against elected officials trying to ban and banning books. Empty shelves don’t help kids learn very much. And I’ve never met a parent who wants a politician dictating what their kid can learn, and what they can think, or who they can be." In June 2023, the Biden administration announced Biden appointed a coordinator at the U.S. Department of Education to address the rise in book bans. The coordinator will train and advise school districts on how book restrictions may violate federal civil rights laws by creating hostile environments for students.

Illinois enacted the nation's first state law to restrict the ability of local libraries to enact book bans. The law withholds state funding from any library that bans books for "partisan or doctrinal" reasons. It makes mandatory the Library Bill of Rights published by the American Library Association. Governor J. B. Pritzker signed the law on June 12, 2023, and it took effect at the start of the following year.

A number of authors whose works were banned spoke out. Some saw it as a badge of honor, while others found it distressing. Kalynn Bayron, author of '' Cinderella Is Dead'', said "these things speak to the level of bigotry that still exists, specifically within our public education system". Kwame Alexander said some of the interest in banning books might have been avoided if advocates had more opportunities themselves as children to experience diverse perspectives. Mikki Kendall, whose book '' Hood Feminism'' was among the most challenged, said the bans are a "ridiculous publicity stunt" which would not actually stop kids from reading the books because "there's nothing more attractive to a kid than a forbidden book". Jason Reynolds, co-author of '' All American Boys'', said the bans were more about parents "doing everything they can to shield young people from the things that scare them, not things that scare the children".

In many cases, bans on certain books led to increased sales of those books, such as works by Jerry Craft, Toni Morrison, and Adam Rapp. The popularizing effects of banning any book, and the increased ease of access in the age of the Internet, mean the consequences of a ban are less significant than they were when books were harder to access, making it more of a ceremonial act. Some critics have argued this also makes some of the actions more about punishing educators and librarians or creating a chilling effect than limiting what students have access to. For example, proposed legislation in Iowa would allow for criminal prosecution of librarians. University of Chicago history professor Ada Palmer said that the main goal of censorship throughout history has not been "to silence or destroy books or works that already exist utto frighten people and discourage them from reading, buying and creating similar works in the future".

Several commentators argued it is hypocritical for conservative pundits and politicians to support banning books that may make students feel uncomfortable after a period of strongly criticizing "cancel culture". Adam Szetela of ''Newsweek'' opined that both the right and the left are "guilty" of banning books, citing the ban of ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' in California schools, Dr. Seuss

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