Library and Banned Book News 7-18-2025
More good news than bad news in stories that caught my attention this week
Hi Friends,
We have some good news this week along with the not-so-good news. First, though, Every Library has issued a report that includes “State By State ‘Bad Bills’ that Passed in 2025” concerning libraries. The states include: Arkansas (3 bills), Idaho (2 bills), Louisiana (1 bill), Nebraska (1 bill), New Hampshire (1 bill), North Dakota (1 bill), South Dakota (1 bill), Tennessee (1 bill), Texas (3 bills), Wyoming (1 bill).
It also includes “State by State: Positive Bills that Were Enacted in 2025.” The states include: Colorado (1 bill), Connecticut (1 bill), Delaware (1 bill), Maine (1 bill), New Jersey (1 bill), Rhode Island (1 bill), Virginia (1 bill).
Good News
Here’s one about the newest development in the story we’ve been following the longest—the lawsuit against the Escambia County, Florida School District. If you are unfamiliar with the issue, this article from ABC News gives a good general summary. Here’s a bit of it:
The lawsuit was brought forward in May 2023 by Penguin Random House, PEN America, authors and families of Escambia County who argue that the school board's removal and restriction of books violates the First Amendment.
The lawsuit claims the county violated the First Amendment rights of the students, authors, and publishers by "removing books 'based on ideological objections to their contents or disagreement with their messages or themes.'"
Several authors whose books have been impacted by book bans across the country, including David Levithan, George M. Johnson and Ashley Hope Pérez, are backing the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also alleges, that in every decision to remove a book, "the removals have disproportionately targeted books by or about people of color and/or LGBTQ people, and have prescribed an orthodoxy of opinion that violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments."
And here is this week’s development:
Escambia school board isn't shielded from testifying in long-running court battle over banned books from WFSU Public Media (NPR/PBS)
A federal appeals court Tuesday rejected an attempt to shield Escambia County School Board members from testifying in a long-running legal battle about removing or restricting access to books in school libraries.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed an appeal that the board filed after U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell ruled in November that board members must testify because they are not protected by what is known as “legislative privilege.” …
“The board cannot appeal because it lacks standing: the legislative privilege belongs to its members and not the board itself,” the decision shared by Judges Elizabeth Branch, Nancy Abudu and Embry Kidd said. “And the board members failed to participate in the case below (at the district court), meaning they do not fall into the limited circumstances under which a nonparty may appeal an order. We therefore lack jurisdiction to hear this appeal and must dismiss.” …
even though the school board’s decision to remove or restrict a book has some hallmarks of a legislative act (e.g., voting after debate at a public meeting), it is functionally an administrative act,” Wetherell wrote.
A book-removal or restriction decision is “based on specific facts (the content of the book)” and is “more akin to a permitting or employment termination decision,” which courts have held to be administrative acts, because officials are following already-established guidelines, the Pensacola-based judge wrote.
The school board quickly appealed Wetherell’s decision. The underlying lawsuit has been on hold while the appeal was pending.
Remember the recent story of the librarian fired over inclusive books in a display? This is heartening.
Georgia Community Rallies to Reinstate Celebrated Librarian Fired Over Inclusive Book Display from the Georgia Recorder
Ayotte Vetoes Book Ban Bill, Fetus Videos and Locker Room Bill from InDepthNH.org (The New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism)
CONCORD — Gov. Kelly Ayotte vetoed a bill that would have school districts establish a process to ban books and other “inappropriate materials” from public schools.
If approved, House Bill 324 would have allowed one parent to determine what books and other materials other students would be able to access at public schools and their libraries.
The bill would allow anyone to file a complaint about books or materials in public schools if they believe they are obscene, harmful or inappropriate for the grade level.
The complaint would begin a process that could end with removing the material from the schools and/or taking educators and school board members to court.
Supporters of the bill said it was not book banning or burning, but a way for their constituents to become part of the process of determining what is appropriate for the education of their child.
But opponents said the bill would hurt public education, usurp local control from school boards and deny students’ rights to access comprehensive materials free from censorship.
They claimed the bill as written could prohibit the teaching of Shakespeare, the Bible or other literary classics because one parent objects.
“Current State law appears to provide a mechanism for parents through their local school district to exercise their rights to ensure their children are not exposed to inappropriate materials,” Ayotte said in her veto message. “Therefore, I do not believe the State of New Hampshire needs to, nor should it, engage in the role of addressing questions of literary value and appropriateness, particularly where the system created by House Bill 324 calls for monetary penalties based on subjective standards.”
Controversial Sumner County policy banning transgender books fails, again. What to know from the Tennessean
A book collections policy proposed to the Sumner County Library Board failed on July 9 after serious pushback to a nearly-identical policy in Rutherford County.
The meeting was the second time the board sought to address the policy, after a meeting in April was abruptly cancelled following national scrutiny aimed at the Rutherford County's policy.
The policy is just one piece of a larger trend of book restrictions and bans across Tennessee — and the nation.
The vote happened at the July 9 Sumner County Library Board meeting, where the measure failed with four in favor, two opposed and two abstentions.
The policy, which sought to ban anything that makes “mention of pertaining, promoting, or subjecting a minor to transgender or gender confusion ideology,” was originally proposed in early 2025. But the meeting that included a scheduled vote on the issue was canceled just hours before it was set to begin on April 9 after Rutherford County came under intense national pushback for an almost identical policy, passed in March.
Rutherford County rescinded its policy on June 2. The action came amidst a lawsuit from the ACLU of Tennessee and PEN America over an additional 145 books that were banned in the county last year and threats of an additional lawsuit over the policy.
Vic’s note/riff: If you do happen to read the entire article and see this:
Board Chair Joanna Daniels said Campbell Parker was “definitely misquoting the Bible.”
“It says sexual sin is a deeper sin than all sins,” she said. “And Jesus did exclude people. He did say homosexuals are not allowed into heaven.”
The article doesn’t correct this, but it is simply not true. Jesus never mentioned homosexuality at all. But a story about actual sexual sin that is in the New Testament is about a woman who was caught in adultery and the crowd wanted to stone her to death. Jesus’s take was ‘let whoever has not sinned cast the first stone.’ So—a famous story about forgiving sexual sin—there’s no ‘sexual sin is a deeper sin than all sins’ in the New Testament. Like what, murder? Who are these crazy people?
Not So Good News
Here Are the 596 Books Being Banned by Defense Department Schools from Military.com
This article includes a link to the complete list, and here it is (in the link, cursor to the appendix):
The full list was released by the order of a federal judge as part of the American Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit against the Department of Defense Education Activity's implementation of President Donald Trump's anti-diversity and anti-LGBTQ+ executive orders.
"The amount of titles banned by the Trump administration is astonishing, and the list provided by DoDEA perfectly illustrates how the administration is putting politics above pedagogy," Emerson Sykes, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said in an emailed statement to Military.com. "Kids on military bases have the same First Amendment rights that we all enjoy, and that their parents swore an oath to defend. Yet the administration has forced schools to remove titles like 'A Is for Activist' and 'Julian Is a Mermaid' that reflect the vibrant and diverse world we live in. All 596 of these books must be returned to shelves immediately."
If you’d like to see a snarky discussion of some of the titles, check out this article.
The Defense Department wants to ban hundreds of books. Here are the weirdest titles. From LitHub
APLS board chair bans books connected to ‘gender ideology’ from Yahoo/The Alabama Reflector
John Wahl, chair of the Alabama Public Library Service (APLS) board, wrote in a letter he sent to local library directors throughout the state on Wednesday stating that the APLS will abide by the executive order issued by President Donald Trump that no federal funds will be used to promote “gender ideology” and instruct libraries throughout Alabama to review their collections and policies to ensure they comply with the executive order. …
“Taxpayer dollars should never be used to push controversial social ideologies on our youth—especially without parental consent,” Wahl said in the statement. “Alabama libraries should be places where families feel safe, respected, and welcome. That starts with keeping divisive political agendas out of collections dedicated to children.”
Alyx Kim-Yohn, an organizer with the Alabama Transgender Rights Action Coalition said that it endangers the transgender community.
“It seems fairly innocuous to remove a book, until you look at the real lived experiences of trans folks who go through their adolescence never knowing how to describe their gender or their sexuality, never meeting people like them,” Kim-Yohn said. “That happens as a direct result of not having access to stories about themselves or meeting other people like them.”
Trump issued an executive order in January that said that “invalidating the true and biological category of ‘woman’ improperly transforms laws and policies designed to protect sex-based opportunities into laws and policies that undermine them, replacing longstanding, cherished legal rights and values with an identity-based, inchoate social concept.”
The order does not define what amounts to gender ideology.
Survey reveals Virginia schools banned over 220 library books since 2020
From "Slaughterhouse-Five" to "Wicked," the survey of Virginia school boards revealed an extensive list of books from award-winning authors that are no longer available to some students
The survey revealed that a significant portion of the increase in banned books is attributed to a misinterpretation of a 2022 law. Virginia's Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin signed into law a bill that required divisions to adopt policies aimed at notifying parents if their child is slated to read instructional material containing sexually explicit content and provide alternatives.
According to Josh Brown at the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, divisions cited the law despite it not mentioning library books in its language.
"But in reality, that 2022 law doesn't necessarily prohibit sexually explicit content, and it certainly doesn't require, even contemplate, removing a book from a school library if it does include sexually explicit content," Brown said. "If you read that law, it's quite clear that isn't what's supposed to apply."
Love reading about effective pushback to the book witch hunt. Thanks for sharing the good news that I might not otherwise see.