New Legislative Tactics to Undermine Anti-Book Ban Bills: Book Censorship News, February 7, 2025

Last year, several states across the US passed anti-book ban legislation. As explained in the linked story, those bills all look a little bit different and offer slightly different protections within them. Ultimately, though, state-level anti-book ban bills make it clear that public schools and/or public libraries cannot remove books from collections based on discriminatory factors like gender, race, or political ideology.

But as this year’s state legislative sessions kick off, some of the states which have passed anti-book ban bills are seeing new bill proposals that, for all intents and purposes, seek to undermine those bills meant to protect library collections.

Minnesota and Maryland each passed anti-book ban bills in 2024. In Minnesota, Senate File 3567 was included as part of a robust education bill. All public schools, public libraries, and public institutions of higher education are now required to have collection policies, as well as guidelines for the selection and reconsideration of material. They also must make clear that books cannot be removed from these institutions on the basis of viewpoint or opinion alone.

Maryland’s bill is not too dissimilar. Maryland’s Freedom to Read Act protects access to books and other library items by stating they cannot be removed or prohibited from collections because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval. Collections seek to serve the research and recreational needs of all, and materials cannot be excluded based on the origin, background, or views of their creator. Both school and public libraries would need to have collection development policies in place, and if a book were to be challenged, the title would remain on shelves and available for use through the reconsideration process.

Both states, however, have book ban legislation on the docket for 2025. Those proposed bills in each state are similar, too: they would make it possible to ban books in public schools if those books contained material deemed “sexually explicit” or “sexually inappropriate.” Those two terms, purposefully vague and not tied to the federally-standard Miller Test for obscenity, would kick open the door to book bans based on whatever interpretation of “sexually explicit” or “sexually inappropriate” is used at the time.

Minnesota’s House File 235, a Republican-sponsored bill, would prohibit public school libraries from containing “any pornographic material.” It further specifies that public elementary schools cannot contain “sexually explicit content.” Neither of these phrases are defined in the bill.

Legislators in the state have a convenient example of why they need this bill, too. Last month, a superintendent in Rochester Public Schools banned a picture book for a single page that featured a wide variety of people attending a Pride parade. It was deemed inappropriate for depicting nudity—none of it gratuitous or obscene by any definition of the words. The book was banned despite the law protecting it from such bans. House File 235 would give explicit permission for the removal of books like this one, especially as there are no definitions for what would or wouldn’t count as “sexually explicit content.”

Maryland’s House Bill 282, another Republican-sponsored bill, would target books or audiovisual materials in elementary, middle, and secondary public schools throughout the state. Though Maryland’s bill lays out a definition of “sexually explicit materials,” it is as vague and meaningless as that in Minnesota. Materials that depict “graphic or obscene depictions of sexual activity” need to be “age-appropriate”—recall that every single person who isn’t a professional in child development, education, librarianship, or similar defines this however is most convenient to them, rather than by actual research and standards.

The state won’t be defining those things, though. It’ll be left up to each county in Maryland to make those decisions. This would allow for policies that quickly undermine the freedom to read legislation, and again, there’s no acknowledgment of the prevailing legal standard for “obscene.”

We’re naive to think that anti-book ban bills are the be-all, end-all. We already have seen the dirty tactics book banners eagerly use to assert their viewpoints in public school libraries in Minnesota—Anoka County Schools plan to use Moms For Liberty‘s partisan, unprofessional BookLooks website in determining what materials can enter public school libraries.

It’s a Maryland-centered case on books that will hit the Supreme Court. Mahmoud v. Taylor is about whether or not Montgomery Public Schools have the right to include LGBTQ+ books in curriculum without the right for parents to opt-out of their inclusion due to “religious objections.” Maryland’s freedom to read act, which states books cannot be removed from public schools or libraries because of origin, background, or beliefs of the author nor partisan or religious disapproval, has little bearing on the case.

Legislators who are hellbent on banning queer people and people of color from public spaces and who have a vested interest in defunding and destabilizing democratic institutions like public libraries and schools are going to find ways to subvert whatever well-intentioned, strongly-written laws are passed to protect these things. Chances are that over the next several months, we’ll see similar bills pop up in states with anti-book ban bills. This is a place where legally sanctioned homophobia via an argument about “sexually explicit content” will thrive.

Here’s your reminder that even if you think you’re in a “good,” “safe,” “blue” state when it comes to book censorship, you aren’t. You need to be writing your representatives, showing up to school and library board meetings, and putting as much time and energy into protecting your public institutions of democracy as those in “bad,” “unsafe,” “red” states have been for the last half-decade. This fight is far from its start and it is also far from over.

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Book Censorship News: February 7, 2025

• Here’s the list of 140 books that were pulled in Kootenai County’s Community Library Network. Recall these are all being reviewed in order to decide whether they will be banned or placed in an adults-only room in the system.
• A Tallahassee Episcopal priest is among the leaders pushing back against book bans in the state. It is crucial to keep hammering this point home: most people of faith don’t believe in book bans. It’s also crucial to hammer this home: even mentioning the idea of banning the Bible or other religious tomes because they “meet the definition of inappropriate” is so belittling of the majority of people of faith who are in this fight against censorship.
• In Pine-Richland School District (PA), a story about one of the teens in the school who is leading the charge against book bans. This might be paywalled.
• Montgomery County Public Library (TX) has been fully engulfed by far-right extremism. The county commissioners just fired the library director who wouldn’t ban LGBTQ+ books they didn’t like. A couple of things of note here. First, this is the county serving students in Conroe Independent School District, where book bans have been abundant. So much for “they can get it at the public library,” right? Second, there’s a fundraiser to help support the former director as she’s lost her job. You can contribute here. Finally, if you’re in Texas, here is how you can take action and tell the county commissioners what they did in firing the director and installing a judge in her place was reprehensible.
• A far-right politician in Arizona is reviving a bill that would put educators in jail if they allow access to “sexually explicit material.” This is great, given that Arizona already bankrupted its public education with their private voucher schemes. Certainly, attacking teachers still in those institutions is going to go well for everyone. (This is, of course, the point).
• “Moms For Liberty co-founder and former Indian River County School Board member Tiffany Justice is joining the conservative Heritage Foundation as a visiting fellow to focus on parent rights.” Sigh. She’ll be executing even more of the Project 2025 plans related to education and libraries (recall we’ve been living this Project 2025 outline already—this will be furthering it).
• Rutherford County Library System (TN) is reviewing a patron complaint over a book this week. The book is Linda Ashman’s Over the River and Through the Wood: A Holiday Adventure and here’s the complaint: “I was surprised to find a family of two dads presented in this book. Please choose books that appeal to all patrons. We can find a way to stock books that do not offend but instead unite. Thank you!” Fascinating take on offending and uniting!
• The ACLU has filed a lawsuit on behalf of an Arkansas librarian, Saline County Library’s former director Patty Hector, who lost her job for not bowing to complaints by the bigots over books in the library.
• Also in Arkansas, there’s a bill attempting to abolish the state library board.
• In the ongoing story at Samuels Public Library (VA), a new PAC has formed to support the library. This is good news.
• Wyoming’s re-upping a potential bill that would make librarians criminals for having LGBTQ+ books err, “books harmful to minors.”
• In Nebraska, one legislator is pitching a bill that would require school libraries to tell parents every time a student borrows a book.
• “In an attempt to avert implementation of a policy that the ACLU of Rhode Island argued would encourage censorship efforts, the organization sent a letter today to Glocester school district Superintendent Renee Palazzo, urging her to rescind directives she issued to the Fogarty Memorial School’s librarians to allow students to check out only “age appropriate” books.” What this superintendent wanted to do was solve for a problem only one parent complained about by creating a backend ratings system and by making librarians in the district liable for not censoring what materials students wanted to access.
• In Lyon County Library (NV), a small number of patrons began their performances over inappropriate books in the library and demanded they be removed. The library board’s director is eating it up with a spoon.
• On the chopping block because of budget cuts in Anchorage Public Schools (AK)? It’s librarians, of course.
• PEN America has compiled the most banned books in US schools for the 2023-2024 school year and notes a documented 16,000 cases of banned books in public schools since 2021.
• In what shouldn’t feel like a win but is: six books that were challenged in St. Johns County Schools (FL) will not be banned but restricted in their access. That means only students in certain grade levels can use or borrow them.
• North Dakota’s got a bill that would criminalize librarians working through the legislature this session, and it is putting libraries in the position that their colleagues in Idaho are dealing with: they don’t have room to relocate so-called “inappropriate” materials in their spaces.
• Duval County Schools (FL) are considering changing their sex education curriculum to not make such education mandatory but optional. If implemented, parents are worried it would allow schools to make sex education opt-IN rather than opt-OUT. In other words, the baseline would be students get no sex education unless their parents say it is okay. Eliminate sex ed + eliminate abortion = create a generation of children who are, from the moment they are conceived, not granted even basic healthcare via their parent (let alone any financial help when they’ve been born).
• “For more than an hour Monday, the House Judiciary Committee discussed House Bill 194, “Obscenity amendments,” which would repeal exemptions in place for public and school librarians from the crime of “promoting obscenity to minors,” with a penalty of a $6,000 fine or one year of imprisonment.” This is a Wyoming bill that would criminalize librarians…including potential huge fees and imprisonment for books that conspiracy theorist weirdos believe are “obscene.”
• This is worth a share because it tells you how in the bag some news outlets are with the right-wing zealotry over “sexuality” and “diversity” in books. A first-grade teacher in the Bay Area (CA) has apparently made some people big mad for sharing her classroom has diverse books.
• Greenville Public Libraries (SC) banned displays and now…posters with information about getting help from domestic violence are gone, too.
• “8 different committees across 5 schools in Polk County were tasked with reviewing titles challenged by CDF [Citizens Defending Freedom. All but one were retained.” Some more decisions on book challenges in Florida schools.
• Utah’s Davis School District has banned six more books.
• An update from Grants Pass, Oregon, where the Board of Commissioners voted to terminate the lease of a branch library, which is set to expire this week.
• In some good news, the South Dakota bill that would cut the State Library and its services, impacting public libraries across the state, has failed to pass.

Here at Book Riot this week, we covered the four new books banned in all public schools in South Carolina, the two new books banned in all public schools in Utah, and the lawsuit brought against Idaho by publishers, authors, and more for its draconian book ban bill.