A Supreme Court ruling at the end of June handed a major victory to parents who want to opt their children out of lessons that run counter to their religious beliefs, part of a push for parental rights over the finer details of what goes on in classrooms that has gained strength in recent years.

Parents of students in a Maryland school district brought the lawsuit forward after the district restricted them from pulling their kids out of class when the lesson included storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters. The 6-3 party-line ruling compels the district to notify parents when any of the books that were part of the case — or similar titles — are slated for use in class.

The case again puts books at the center of a power struggle over what kind of characters and worldviews children should be exposed to in K-12 schools.

It’s one that surfaced more commonly in recent years with thousands of challenges to books in school libraries, subsequent bans and laws codifying the restriction particularly of books that touch on racism and LGBTQ+ characters.

And experts say it’s part of a broader effort to undermine public education.

Librarians have been on the forefront of efforts to protect access to books in school libraries, and experts from two library organizations recently released their analysis on the state of book bans.

By the Numbers

Book bans dipped in the 2023-24 school year compared to the previous year but still numbered more than 10,000, with nearly 4,200 unique books targeted, according to an analysis by PEN America.

Just 16 percent of book bans were initiated by complaints from parents, according to an American Library Association analysis, with nearly 72 percent coming from “pressure groups” or decision-makers like elected officials and administrators. Its Office for Intellectual Freedom received 821 reports of attempts to restrict books across all library types in 2024. That’s down from the previous year’s nearly 1,250 reports, but it’s still the third-highest in the office’s 35 years of tracking library censorship.

A common thread through the American Library Association’s most challenged books of 2024 is that they touch on issues of LGBTQ+ identity, sexual abuse or substance abuse. PEN America noted similar targeting of book themes.

“Disproportionate to publishing rates and like prior school years, books in this prominent subset overwhelmingly include books with people and characters of color (44%) and books with LGBTQ+ people and characters (39%),” according to PEN America.

Florida and Iowa overwhelmingly led the nation in book bans, each representing 45 percent and 36 percent of challenges in 2023-24.

The State Board of Education in Iowa closely controls books that are allowed in schools, and Florida’s Stop WOKE Act and “Don’t Say Gay” law are credited with forcing schools to remove books that touch on racial or LGBTQ+ issues.

The school district that led the nation in book bans was Escambia County Public Schools in Florida, which removed nearly 1,600 titles from its shelves during the 2023-24 school year. The school board recently voted unanimously to add an express lane to their book banning process, removing without review any titles that appear on a state list of challenged and banned books.

The Education Culture War

Book bans don’t exist in a vacuum, experts say, but are part of larger campaigns by political groups and their funders to decrease trust in public schools and smooth the way for state spending on private religious schools.

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, says book banning campaigns are generally not grassroots efforts led by parents.

She notes that one school district in Virginia put more than 100 books under literal lock and key last year at the behest of a local preacher. A Tennessee school district removed around 400 books following a state law banning any book with “patently offensive” content, which led to the removal of titles like Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” and Sherman Alexie’s “The

Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.”

“The majority of book censorship attempts are now originating from well-funded, organized groups and movements long dedicated to curbing access to information and ideas,” Caldwell-Stone writes in the organization’s report on the state of public libraries in 2024.

The momentum behind recent book bans can be traced back to the pandemic onset and racial reckoning after the death of George Floyd in 2020, Marianne Wood Forrest, an EveryLibrary Institute researcher, writes in her recent report “The Censorship Acceleration.” It was a time when parents saw firsthand how their children struggled during Zoom classes and politicians cultivated fears that schools were making some students (i.e. white children and boys) feel “psychological distress” by discussing racial or gender discrimination.

When the bans were ramping up, librarians fought back against the demonization of their stacks by flooding Twitter with messages about intellectual freedom.

Activist groups like Moms for Liberty rally supporters around what they say are parents’ rights to control their children’s exposure to material they consider obscene, typically books that deal with racial equality and LGBTQ+ issues. They and similar organizations successfully seated their candidates on school boards around the country.

A drop in trust of public schools goes hand-in-hand with efforts to fund private schools with public money, Wood Forrest writes, as seen most recently with a $1 billion school voucher program in Texas that was championed by the governor.

“This shift in focus from local school board elections toward broader efforts of school privatization, under the guise of parents’ rights, is,” she writes, “a trend worth watching in future years.”

Resistance to Book Bans

Wood Forrest notes that pushes against book bans have taken shape around the country, led by students and librarians alike.

EveryLibrary reported that 70 bills aimed at protecting free expression, preventing censorship and protecting library workers were introduced in state legislatures in 2024. United Against Book Bans has created “book résumés,” which include book summaries and reviews that people can use to defend books facing censorships at public meetings.

Courts in Arkansas, Idaho and Texas overturned laws that claimed library users “have no First Amendment rights,” Caldwell-Stone notes. Lawsuits in at least eight states are challenging book bans, she adds, and residents are turning out to oppose book bans in their communities.

Many Florida school board candidates backed by Moms for Liberty and the state’s Republican governor were defeated in their elections last year. Students and community members in Minnesota spoke during public comment at a school board meeting for two hours in March to denounce the district’s book ban, which has been rolled back following a lawsuit. Voters in a Texas district ousted a school board president who prompted book bans.

While book bans have also proven to be “deeply unpopular,” Wood Forrest says, they still pose a threat to libraries and information access.

“The future of libraries, education, access, and representation is at stake,” she writes. “Book bans in their current form are a tool used by the political right to destabilize institutions that have historically identified themselves as cornerstones of democracy.”