The new tactics being employed to censor books should serve to highlight what is to come in other states in the coming years. What we’ve already seen in terms of quiet censorship, the chilling effect, and the blatant lies about laws intending to return local control to public schools are only going to amplify. Florida and Texas officials are providing the roadmap.
Book Selection by Parental Committee in Texas
Texas’s legislature had a slew of anti-library, anti-intellectual, pro-censorship bills on the docket this session. These bills came amid the ongoing legal battle over the Texas READER Act (HB 900) from 2023, which would permit the State Board of Education–appointed by the governor–to define materials deemed appropriate for schools. The READER Act also would require book vendors to rate books being sold to libraries. As of January 2024, the Fifth Circuit denied the state the right to implement several of that law’s provisions.
Literary Activism
News you can use plus tips and tools for the fight against censorship and other bookish activism!
Of special concern is the 2025 passage of Senate Bill 13 (SB 13). This bill outlines the materials deemed “inappropriate” in public and public charter school libraries. It also designates where and how parents can become involved in local-level advisory committees (School Library Advisory Councils, or SLAC) that would empower them to make decisions about materials acquired for the library, materials removed from the library when such materials are challenged, and decide policy of those libraries. SLACs would be composed of at least five members, each appointed by the school board and a “majority” of whom are parents of students in the district. It’s ripe territory for far-right political action committees who’ve poured untold amounts of money into Texas school board races to ensure that their agendas are passed at the district level. Now they can use those expensively-won seats to further push far-right conservative agendas into the local school library via “parents.”
If SLAC sounds like it’s replacing the work of trained, educated, and experienced professional libraries, that’s because it is. Librarians would still be allowed to propose materials for their collections, but librarians would need to take SLAC feedback into consideration before making such purchases.
SLACs are not required by Senate Bill 13, though. The bill makes clear that the local school board can continue to rely on their trained, professional library staff, so long as everything in the library meets the standards as outlined in the bill. This is because local control is still the hinge upon which such legislation rests. According to SB 13, SLACs may be established by the local school board of trustees by board action, or by petition, in the case where a board has not already established a SLAC. 50 parents or 10% of parents, whichever number is smaller, must petition for a SLAC for it to be required in the district. Those petitioners are not automatically placed on the SLAC, either; the school board still chooses their players.
Conversations during the past weeks at school board meetings throughout the state indicate some misunderstanding about whether SB 13 requires districts to establish a SLAC, or not.
It isn’t a leap to say that districts are already implementing SLACs without regard for what the law actually says. SB 13 goes into effect September 1, and the slew of stories about SLACs in various Texas districts have been flooding the news. In districts with far-right control, the SLAC setup is a dream. For others, the pressure to develop a SLAC, whether or not the demand for one has been raised per the law, is undeniable. The bill’s language is intended to create a chilling effect and solicit compliance. Libraries already know the precarious position they’re in under the Texas legislature, and while library workers should be pushing back and educating their school boards about what SB 13 actually says, most aren’t. The state has created such a level of fear around libraries that library workers are simply staying quiet so as not to be made the next example of whatever the latest false accusation is.
SB 13 deprofessionalizes librarianship, while also being a clever means of creating more hoops through which library workers have to jump through to provide inclusive, diverse materials to their students. No book in a school library is required to be read by users. No one is forcing these books on any student. Indeed, SB 13 is the mechanism by which parents can opt their students out of any books they deem unsuitable.
There’s also this: Steve Wandler, whose business BookmarkED/OnShelf aims to “help” school librarians navigate book bans has been seeping into Texas school libraries over the last two years, was involved in advocating for this very bill back in 2023. He and his company are poised to make a pretty penny from their software, which allows library workers in schools to “see” what books are being banned and whether or not they are in the collection. The program “lets” library workers to keep track of the books that individual parents don’t want their students to access while providing parents a tool to find additional titles to add to those lists via “proprietary AI.” All of the tools provided by the software already exist in integrated library systems, but BookmarkED/OnShelf doesn’t appear to provide the security to ensure personal information of students are protected in the same way that legacy catalog systems do.
It won’t be long before we see that the provisions within SB 13 shift and change. That’s not being cynical. With the Texas READER Act’s legal challenge, SB 13 is a way of subverting librarian knowledge and expertise while also slowly providing the means by which the state decides the books public schools can provide access to. . . and which the state says aren’t allowed, period. That’s why the appointments for SLACs happen via the school board. That’s why it’s not required that any professional be on the SLAC (and even if a professional librarian or educator were invited on, they’re a nonvoting member).** That’s also why school board trustees are given the power to make library acquisition and removal decisions in cases where SLACs are not deployed.
Florida’s State-Pushed Book Bans at Public School Districts
What’s happening right now in Florida is an example of exactly how the law in Texas will be further exploited by the state and encourage mass book bans via state mandate.
In mid-June, Florida’s House Bill 1539 failed. This bill would redefine the federal-level Miller Test–and prevailing Florida standard–used to define obscenity carving out an exception to each of the test’s three prongs that would allow for consideration of unique community standards and literary, artistic, scientific, and political value for minors. In other words, “Literary merit” would have no bearing on whether or not something was considered obscene if it was in violation of Florida’s education laws (Statute 1006.28). Lawmakers argued they could change the test for defining obscenity on the grounds of Ginsberg v. New York, a 1968 Supreme Court case which ruled that some material may be harmful to children, even if it does not rise to the level of obscene. Ginsberg has been among the latest legal loopholes legislators have been eager to apply as reasoning for removing books they don’t like.
Upon the bill’s failure, both Florida’s Education Commissioner and Attorney General contacted leadership at Hillsborough County Public Schools. The Education Commissioner’s letter stated that the district had two books deemed “pornographic” in the collection that needed to be removed immediately. The two books are Call Me By Your Name and Jack of Hearts and Other Parts. The Attorney General’s letter added four more titles: Choke, Beautiful, What Girls Are Made Of, and Breathless.
Florida’s statute 1006.28 puts into place a series of requirements which school districts must follow when it comes to selecting and removing materials from the library. The goal here is to allow each school to operate locally, but that “local control” comes from adherence to a number of criteria. In other words, unlike in states like South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah, wherein the state maintains a list of books that must be removed from every public school library statewide, Florida schools set their own policy, so long as it aligns with state laws. While Florida’s Department of Education requires that each school submit to them books removed from their libraries and why annually, those lists aren’t used to then demand removal of those books from additional schools (as in Utah).
But in the case of Hillsborough, the Education Commission and Attorney General decided that it was their place to demand the removal of six books from the district. The removal of those six books–done without formal review per school policy and state policy–then led to the agreement by the Hillsborough County Schools superintendent to pull 49 more books without review, following a heated meeting with the state Board of Education. Among those books was a title that the district had already had a challenge to and that went through the formal review process. It had been retained for certain grade levels.
The State Board of Education meeting the Superintendent of Hillsborough attended involved a series of continued threats toward the school. The Commissioner implied that the state law actually did kind of give the state authority in making decisions at the district level, and one member of the board said that all of the library workers in the district should simply be fired. Another board member said that Hillsborough shouldn’t bother reviewing the books on their shelves that were on the list of 600 books banned by other districts in the state; Hillsborough should simply remove them.
Hillsborough was threatened if they did not comply.
While the actions were directed at Hillsborough, the goal here wasn’t solely to target Hillsborough. It was to demand compliance and complicity in other school districts as well, and that was successful. Pasco Public Schools and Pinellas Public Schools went ahead and removed 55 titles that the State Board deemed patently inappropriate and pornographic. Neither had the books go through the formal review process. Neither followed the state statute’s procedures nor their own.
All of those actions were done despite the Statute permitting schools to make local-level decisions. All of those actions were taken to intimidate local officials into compliance with laws and authority that did not actually exist.
The Lies of Local Control
For the last four and a half years, book banners have shouted about curating collections in their own public schools and libraries being about “local control.” And yet, none of the laws being passed are actually about local control. They’re about the government doing precisely what the book banners insist they’re against: coparenting with the government.
To call it “coparenting” would be too generous. This is about the government doing all of the work of parenting, making it so parents never have to do the hard parts of actually parenting their children. We have seen this playing out in Utah and South Carolina already, with state-sanctioned book bans. Utah bans books from all public schools if it has been banned in three public school districts; South Carolina bans books statewide if the Department of Education decides that if complaints of a single parent are enough to warrant that. If the government simply removes the books from shelves, no discussion of race, of sex, of gender, of human bodies, or anything outside of the narrow confines of far-right Christian ideology needs to be discussed. The “public” part of being part of the public is simply gone–the only exposure to the world comes from the narrow perspectives doled out with permission of the government. As state government threatens local districts by demanding compliance via manipulatable mechanisms like SLACs and ever-changing interpretations of legal statutes, local control is seized, not permitted. The government takes local control away from the locals and puts it in their own pockets. They control what’s local.
By the government saying “local control” in one breath and acting as that local control in the next, they’re underscoring reality here. Local communities have said time and time again that they do not want book bans. That they do not want to waste time and taxpayer money on bigotry and hatred when there are real, actual issues related to education where that could be better spent. They want better support for educators, fully funded public schools, and school services that support the whole of their educational community (including things like robust IEPs, mental health services, disability services, and more–the very things the Department of Education under this administration wants to destroy).
The only way to retain control is to steal it and spread lies all the way down.
What Texas has set up with SB 13 is the opportunity for exploitation not only locally, but statewide. Schools may have the ability to keep their library workers as the authority in making decisions about library materials per the law, but how long until state legislators decide that actually, SLACs are required and that the state will be providing resources to ensure those SLACs include members who’ll fall in line with the far-right agenda? Not very.
Florida, with its gross overreach by the state in demanding book removals based on whatever legal loopholes they choose that day, shows exactly how this will happen. This summer, they targeted Hillsborough and got what they really wanted through compliance in other districts–none of which followed the policies they were required to have under the law. It was easier to just give in and fall in line; they earn a momentary gold star in good behavior from the state appointed board at the expense of serving their actual communities and taxpayers.
“Local control” is about how the state can wrestle democracy away from the locals, not the other way around. It’s not all that different from how the Establishment Clause means one thing to most people but another thing all together to a small group hellbent on pushing their agenda onto others.
Erasure and removal of public goods are the end goal. By creating two systems–one established under the guise of “local control” and another by which such “local control” is really but an opportunity for the government to overrule–we see where and how public goods are undermined. These institutions lose their role as serving the whole public when they don’t bow to government officials, who use their power to threaten their livelihood.
Now with Texas entering the era of voucher schemes, it’s about to get a lot worse, a lot quicker, for all Texas communities. From here, the push will move to more and more states, opening up the door to even more destruction of public education and public access to knowledge, information, and recreation.
It also begs the question of which government is meant in rulings related to libraries and “government speech.”
To be crystal clear: both Florida and Texas have some of the most dedicated anti-book ban and intellectual freedom fighters on the ground. If you haven’t gotten to know the Florida Freedom to Read Project, the Texas Freedom to Read Project, or the Texas FReadom Fighters, no better time than now. Anyone suggesting red states deserve what they’re getting boast their ignorance about systemic voter disenfranchisement and historic gerrymandering.
*Worth noting that some of those banking on the theft of money from public schools are now seeking to let their children have access to public education again–if what your publicly-funded private school is providing isn’t meeting the needs of your kids, that sounds like pretty compelling evidence that your kids will do better in public schools.
**In the case of permitting but not requiring a professional on the committee, by the way, clergy are included on the list.
Book Censorship News for August 8, 2025
- The Florida Freedom to Read Project talks about the removal of local control this week, too, and highlights how the Florida Department of Education is now demanding book removals via Twitter.
- The same state orders that forced Hillsborough and several other Florida school districts to remove books without review has now come to Broward County, where 55 books were banned without review.
- Pickens County Public Library (SC) broke their own policies and moved 10 books from the teen area to the adult area. It’s still censorship. There’s prayer involved here, too, don’t worry.
- The book banning Francis Howell school district (MO) hired a conservative consultant behind the back of the school and hey, they were involved in highlighting materials being used in the district that could lead to more book bans. Color me shocked.
- “The St. Johns CountySchool Districtis assuring parents that it does not use Beanstack, an online reading platform flagged by Florida education officials for allegedly pushing political ideology and offering inappropriate content to students.” It’s an app that helps people track reading and book related goals. This is what they’re fake mad about!
- Florida is really going all in on attacking Beanstack. It’s literally a tool used to track reading tasks or challenges.
- Long Beach Public Library (CA) is joining Brooklyn Public Library’s Books Unbanned program, providing even more access to ebooks for young people.
- The Smithsonian Museum succumbed to fascist dictate and removed an exhibit about Trump’s impeachment.
- Graduates of Nixa schools (MO) came back together this summer to push against book bans.
- “He said it was also important the county restricted Fresno County Library displays, like the downtown location’s book shelf near the entrance that highlighted authors from the LGBTQ+ community.” Fresno, California’s, County Supervisor is micromanaging all of the celebrations the city will partake in, including down to saying LGBTQ+ book displays in the library are against policy now. Fresno County’s leadership has been obsessed with banning books and topics of books from the library for a long time, and because they were blocked from doing so due to the anti-book banning bill in the state, this is their new solution.
- YA author Saundra Mitchell fled Indiana when the book banning laws got impossible to live under, and now, she’s feeling them in her new state of Maryland.
- Maryland’s Inspector General is concerned about Somerset County Schools because they changed one of their library policies wherein library workers no longer select materials in the collection. School board members do.
- “A YouTube political activist is suing Washoe County [NV] over his attempts to record video of Drag Queen Story Hours at public libraries. Drew Ribar, in a complaint filed in federal court, claims library staff “censored (his) speech, blocked him from social media, assaulted him, detained him without suspicion, imposed baseless suspensions, and defamed him.” In response, the county paints Ribar as someone who relentlessly taunts library employees, leaving them shaken and scared. At an event at North Valleys Library, both sides claim the other engaged in assault.” Sigh.
- Wake County Schools (NC) will not be banning The Kite Runner from the district.
- A pastor in Howell, Michigan, is attempting to ban almost 200 LGBTQ+ books from the Cromaine Library. He is the president of the library board and has an outsized influence here. Here’s more to the story–the board claims they’re not banning the books but going to label them instead. This is still censorship, and it’s intended to other LGBTQ+ books and people.
- Berkeley County School District (SC) banned access to a free digital library of materials in February and it still has not been restored.
- Arkansas’s State Library Board was disbanded. This is a story to watch because it is quite likely we’ll see more cruelty directed to libraries throughout the state. The disbanding is a result of their attempts to shutter the state library.
- Duval County Public Schools (FL) seems to have pulled 24 book titles from shelves in June without any formal review.
- Among the 600 books banned in Monroe County Public Schools (TN) are an encyclopedia about dogs and cats. Titillating stuff, dogs and cats.
- “The Redlands school board voted 3-2 to move forward with a revised version of a policy that makes it easier to pull library books off shelves if they have explicit content.” Remember that California has an anti-book ban law and that only matters if it’s enforced. In Redlands, they’ll be creating a book ratings system as well to decide whether or not books are inappropriate.
- Speaking of Redlands, some folks are calling for one of the board members to step down because her Instagram was filled with antisemitic and anti-LGBT+ content. Shocking, huh?
- Here’s an update about the nonsense school board meeting for Penfield, New York, schools in February over the book The Rainbow Parade (this is the one that involved someone showing up dressed as an ape–yes, “nonsense school board meeting” is a meaningless description at this point). The school is now spending a lot of taxpayer money on security measures for these meetings. So, good work bigots?
- Internationally, Indian officials in Kashmir have banned 25 books, including by Arundhati Roy.
- “At Tuesday’s New Hanover County [NH] school board meeting, Republican board members Josie Barnhart and Pat Bradford led the charge to have their colleagues consider codifying new rules around parent and student book challenges. That would include school-level requests for book limitations or removals going to a districtwide review, redacting the names of parents who ask for school or district limitations or removals of books, and instituting a book rating system similar to MPAA ratings.” But they don’t want to be called book banners, wahhh.
- Chair of the Sumner County Public Library board (TN) really believes everyone in her community wants to ban any trans and “gender confusing” books from the public library. The motion failed, but she’s becoming notorious for her eagerness to ban books in the public library under the guise of “following the law.”
- Wyoming folks, there’s a deeply concerning bill on your legislative docket worth knowing about. Non-Wyoming folks, a look at censorship being lodged in libraries by just a few people in the state. That’s how it is everywhere.