U.S. Book Challenges Update: June 2025 Edition

Libraries and schools across the country are experiencing unprecedented levels of attempts to ban or remove books from their shelves. I Love Libraries will continue to raise awareness by highlighting attempts to censor library materials, as well as efforts by librarians, parents, students, and concerned citizens to push back against them. This report includes news from Florida, Tennessee, and Texas.

Groups urge Florida lawmakers to probe school book removals

Florida officials have been accused of violating First Amendment rights and undermining the state’s review process for library books after school districts across the state removed dozens of books the state’s attorney general called “pornographic,” reports the Tallahassee Democrat.

Advocacy groups and authors of books banned in Florida school libraries asked the Florida Legislature’s Joint Administrative Procedures Committee in a June 17 letter to investigate the orders for local school districts to remove objectionable library books without conducting a review process under state law.

This book review process, signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis in 2023, grants parents the ability to object to library materials in schools through the local school board, which would use media specialists and review committees to evaluate the challenged books. The board would then decide to approve the parent’s appeal or to remove or restrict the book from library shelves. The letter states that school boards are removing books without any review process.

“The actions of these appointed state officials not only undermine the rule of law but also set a dangerous precedent for censorship without accountability,” the letter reads. “We ask you to defend the rights of Florida’s students, teachers, and communities by ensuring the law is respected.”

The letter has more than 40 signatures from organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, PEN America, the Florida Freedom to Read Project, and the American Library Association. Authors of some of the books in the state’s list, including Ellen Hopkins (“Tilt” and “Tricks”) and Malinda Lo (“Last Night at the Telegraph Club”), also signed.

‘A Light in the Attic,’ ‘Maus,’ ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ among hundreds of books banned in Tennessee

“Magic Tree House” author Mary Pope Osborne, poet Shel Silverstein, and “Calvin and Hobbes” cartoonist Bill Watterson have joined Judy Blume, Sarah J. Maas, Eric Carle, and Kurt Vonnegut on a list of hundreds of authors whose books have been purged from some Tennessee school libraries, reports PEN America.

In 2024, the Tennessee state legislature amended the “Age-Appropriate Materials Act of 2022” to specify that any materials that “in whole or in part” contain any “nudity, or descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence, or sadomasochistic abuse” are inappropriate for all students and do not belong in a school library. As a result of this change, books are not evaluated as a whole, and excerpts can be considered without context, if they have any content that is deemed to cross these lines.

The results of this overcompliance are staggering. In Monroe County, 574 books have been purged from school libraries. More than 100 titles have been taken off the shelves in Knox County, more than 150 titles have been removed in Rutherford County. More than 300 have been banned in Oak Ridge Schools. And more than 400 in Wilson County.

The lists of banned books range from Silverstein’s “A Light in the Attic” to books featuring LGBTQ+ youth like “Two Boys Kissing” by David Levithan to historical accounts like “They Called Us Enemy” by George Takei and “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race,” by Margot Lee Shetterly. Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic memoir “Maus,” “The Hidden Children of the Holocaust” by Ester Kustanowitz, and “Secret Holocaust Diaries: Nonna Bannister” have also been banned.

“The floodgates of censorship have burst open in Tennessee,” said Sabrina Baêta, senior program manager with PEN America’s Freedom to Read program. “The only thing that all these banned books have in common is the fact that they’re banned. Looking at the lists, practically anyone would be able to find a book they value being villainized and removed. And time and time again, the students are those most hurt by these empty shelves.” 

Appeals court ruling raises bar for challenging school book bans

A federal appeals court ruling will make it more difficult for library patrons to challenge book removal decisions, with the decision involving a public library in Texas but likely applying to school libraries also, reports Education Week.

In its 10-7 decision on May 23, the full US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, in New Orleans, ruled that a library’s decision to remove books may not be challenged under the First Amendment based on library users’ right to receive information. The decision would appear to apply equally to public libraries and school libraries in the three states in the 5th Circuit—Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

The court’s decision in Little v. Llano County devotes much discussion to school library book challenges. Notably, the court overruled its own 1995 precedent that suggested students could challenge the removal of books in their schools.

“I expect this opinion to have far-reaching practical consequences on both public and school libraries,” said Katherine P. Chiarello, an Austin, Texas, lawyer who represents the plaintiffs in the suit challenging book removals in Llano County.