Book bans for nonfiction books more than doubled in 2024-2025, according to a new report from PEN America, while removals of books about people of color and LGBTQ+ identities also grew. PEN analyzed 3,734 titles that were removed from schools between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025. The organization found 6,780 instances of book removals from 23 states. While fiction still dominates book bans, the ratio of fiction to nonfiction changed markedly from the previous year. From 2023–2024, 85 percent of banned books were fiction and 14 percent were nonfiction; last year, the fiction percentage fell to 69 percent […]
Book Bans
Book Banners Use AI to Expedite Their Efforts
Parent groups have begun using AI to streamline their book banning efforts around the country, creating content that looks like official book reviews to influence government officials to restrict books, 404 Media reports. Blockade uses OpenAI or xAI’s technology to create book reports for conservative “book rating” websites. The tool searches for words the developers have deemed inappropriate and creates a “risk profile” for the book that can then be downloaded and sent to officials to justify book removals. Blockade purposely takes the flagged words out of context and does not explain its ratings. “The script explicitly defines ‘educational inappropriateness’ […]
ACLU Files Book Banning Suit On Behalf of Vonnegut Estate
The American Civil Liberties Union of Utah filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Utah on behalf of the estate of Kurt Vonnegut; authors Elana K. Arnold, Ellen Hopkins, and Amy Reed; and two anonymous Utah public high school students, over the state’s book banning law. Utah’s Sensitive Materials Law, passed in 2022 and amended in 2024, requires public schools and their libraries to remove certain “inappropriate” books or books with any reference to sex. These books include Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, among many other award-winning titles. The plaintiffs write in the complaint that the law […]
SCOTUS Won’t Hear TX Library Case, Upholds Book Bans
The Supreme Court decided not to hear an appeal in the Texas book banning case Little v. Llano, upholding a Court of Appeals ruling that sides with the county and allows book removals. In 2021, Llano County officials removed 17 books about race and slavery, LGBTQIA+ identities, and “butt and fart books” from the public library. The bans were overturned and books were protected by two courts, which ruled that government officials could not remove books based on their content. But in May, a full en banc ruling by the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit Court of appeals reversed those decisions, […]
Missouri Book Banning Law Struck Down
A Missouri Circuit Court overturned a state law that criminalized public and private school teachers and librarians for providing students books with what the state considered “sexually explicit material.” The judge called the law “unconstitutionally vague vague… and overbroad.” The law, which was enacted in 2022, resulted in hundreds of books being removed from school libraries. School staff members who were in violation could be fined $2000 or jailed for up to a year. “This is a real victory for all library professionals who are trained to select age-appropriate, developmentally appropriate material for students in both public and private schools,” […]
Judge Again Rules Against TX READER Law
Judge Alan D. Albright of the US District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin Division again ruled that Texas’s “READER Act,” which would require booksellers to rate every book they sell to public school libraries based on vague notions of “sexually explicit material,” is unconstitutional. He issued a permanent injunction against the law. Albright, who made the same ruling in 2023 before the case was appealed, agreed with plaintiffs Blue Willow Bookshop, BookPeople, the ABA, AAP, Authors Guild, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, that “READER can and does violate the First Amendment in several ways.” Albright […]