Librarians are getting protection in some states as book bans increase

Karen Grant and other school librarians across New Jersey have heard an increasingly thunderous chorus from parents and conservative activists calling for certain books — often about race, gender and sexuality — to be removed from shelves.

Last year, Grant and her colleagues at Ewing Public Schools north of Trenton updated a three-decade-old policy to review parents’ challenges to books they consider pornographic or inappropriate. Grant’s team feared that without a up-to-date policy, the district would immediately bow to someone who wanted to ban certain books.

At about the same time, Trenton state legislators were preparing legislation to establish a statewide book challenge policy that would prevent book bans based solely on a book’s subject matter or the author’s background or views, while also preventing public bans Protects librarians and school librarians from legal problems or civil liability from those upset by the reading materials offered.

When Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy signed the measure into law last month, Grant breathed a little easier.

“We just hear so many stories about our librarians feeling threatened and attacked,” said Grant, who works at Parkway Elementary School and is president of the New Jersey Association of School Librarians. “This was a wrong, an injustice that must be corrected.”

Amid a nationwide rise in book bans in school libraries and up-to-date laws in some red states that threaten criminal sanctions against librarians, a growing number of blue states are taking the opposite approach.

New Jersey joined At least five other states – California, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington – have passed laws in the past two years aimed at preserving access to reading materials that address racial and sexual issues, including those about the LGBTQ+ community. Community.

Conservative groups have pushed to ban materials to protect children from what they say is harmful content. In the 2023-24 school year, there were 10,000 cases of book bans across the United States – almost three times as many as the year before, according to data a current report from PEN America, a nonprofit organization that advocates for literary freedom.

“Certain books are harmful to children – just as drugs, alcohol, R-rated movies and tattoos are harmful to them,” says Kit Hart, chairman of the Carroll County, Maryland, chapter of Moms for Liberty, a statewide organization that advocates for the cause Ban on books begins , wrote in an email.

But some states now protect librarians and the books they offer.

“Heads of state are showing that censorship has no place in their state and that freedom to read is a principle that will be supported and protected,” said Kasey Meehan, director of the Freedom to Read program at PEN America, which has tracked book bans since 2021 .

However, the urge to ban certain books shows no sign of abating. As a handful of states battle censorship in school libraries, some communities in those states are trying to regain local control and continue to remove materials viewed by conservative local officials as lurid and harmful to children.

“Lives are at stake”

The New Jersey measure not only sets minimum standards for local governments when adopting a policy on how books are curated or can be challenged, but also prevents school districts from discriminating against material based on “the provenance, background, or views of the library material or those who created it.” “contributed”. ”

The law also grants librarians immunity from civil and criminal liability for “acts in good faith.”

New Jersey state Sen. Andrew Zwicker, a Democrat who introduced the bill, said until recently he thought book bans were a troubling trend, but one circumscribed to other states. But early last year, he went to a brunch event and met a school librarian who told him that she had been subjected to a barrage of verbal and online abuse for refusing to remove a handful of books with LGBTQ+ themes from her library’s shelves remove.

“That’s when I realized I was so terribly wrong, that these attacks on librarians and the freedom to read were happening everywhere,” Zwicker told Stateline. “I went to her and asked, ‘What can I do?'”

He said he has already heard from lawmakers in Rhode Island who are considering introducing a similar measure this year.

A child who identifies with the LGBTQ+ community can read memoirs like “Gender Queer“by Maia Kobabe and feel seen for the first time in her life,” he said.

“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that lives are at stake here, that these books are so important to people, and that librarians are trusted gatekeepers who ensure that what sits on a library’s shelf is curated and is appropriate,” said Zwicker.

These up-to-date state laws, some of which are called the Freedom to Read Act, were passed almost entirely along party lines and with unanimous Democratic support.

In New Jersey, Republican Rep. Dawn Fantasia, who has worked in schools for 18 years, including as an English teacher, vehemently opposed the measure. She did not respond to an interview request.

“These aren’t puritanical parents saying, ‘Oh, I don’t want my child to learn how babies are made.'” she said during a committee hearing in September. “This is ridiculous and we all know it.”

She added, “I want us to be able to have an honest conversation about some of the content in these texts that is extremely inappropriate for this grade level.”

Enforcement and penalties

Legislation varies from state to state, including enforcement and punishment of non-compliant locations.

In Illinois, for example, school districts risk losing thousands of dollars in state grants if they violate the state’s up-to-date law banning books. But like the Chicago Tribune reported last monthThat financial penalty wasn’t enough to convince many school districts across the state to comply, with administrators saying they were concerned about giving up local control over school decisions.

Several school districts in other states have also rebelled.

North of Minneapolis, St. Francis Area Schools board last month decided It would consult with the conservative group BookLooks to determine which books it will buy for its school libraries. BookLooks uses a number from 0 to 5 Rating system that flags books for violent and sexual content.

Under his rating system, books that have long been in school libraries — like the Holocaust memoir “Night” by Elie Wiesel or “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou — would have to get parental consent to read.

When asked whether the school district may be violating state law, school board member Amy Kelly, who led the initiative to utilize BookLooks, declined an interview. Karsten Anderson, superintendent of St. Francis Area Schools, also declined an interview request.

In Maryland, schools in Carroll County led The state has banned books in recent years, eliminating at least 59 titles that were “sexually explicit” in the 2023-2024 school year, according to a tally by PEN America.

Schools should not allow children to watch “kink and porn,” wrote Hart of Moms for Liberty. She became involved in the effort more than three years ago, saying she wanted to protect her five children and their parents’ right to make educational decisions.

She pointed to a book to illustrate her point: “Let’s talk about it: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human,” a nonfiction graphic novel by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan that aims to educate teens about anatomy and consensual and safe sex. The book also addresses other issues of gender and sexuality. Hart compared the book’s illustrations, which depict different types of sex, to “eroticism.”

“Parents who supply their children with alcohol or drugs or give them a tattoo would rightly be charged with a crime,” she wrote in an email to Stateline. “Schools that provide sexually explicit content to children are negligent at best.”

The future of book bans

About 8,000 of the more than 10,000 cases of banned books in the 2023-24 school year involved schools in Florida and Iowa, according to PEN America. Lawmakers in those states passed a law in 2023 that would establish procedures for school districts to remove books with sexual content.

Now Iowa requires that reading materials offered in schools should be “age appropriate,” while the Florida Law ensures that books challenged for depicting or describing “sexual behavior” are removed from shelves while the challenge is processed by the district.

Some of these banned books contain Classics like “Roots” by Alex Haley and “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” by Betty Smith.

In the past year, lawmakers in Idaho, Tennessee and Utah have passed measures banning certain reading materials that discuss sex or are otherwise deemed inappropriate a December report from EveryLibrary, an Illinois-based organization that campaigns against book bans. Arizona Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed similar legislation in June.

There were laws banning books several lawsuits In recent years, as the plaintiffs argue, these measures violate constitutional protections for free speech.

Late last month, a federal judge dejected Parts of a 2023 Arkansas law that threatens prison time for librarians who distribute “harmful” material to minors. Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, a Republican, announced the state would appeal the decision.

EveryLibrary is Persecution 26 bills in five states that lawmakers will consider this year that would target books with sexual and racial themes.

Organized efforts to remove books based on LGBTQ+ or racial themes will continue, said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

The club that Sense Book bans as part of its mission to support libraries and information science, noted that most of them Top banned books there were LGBTQ+ protagonists across the country.

“Librarians have always been about giving individuals access to the information they need, whether for education, enrichment or understanding,” she said in an interview. “Censorship is diametrically opposed to this mission.”