Book bans in US schools nearly tripled from last academic year

More than 10,000 books were banned in US public schools from 2023 to 2024, according to the latest report by PEN America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to freedom of expression.

The dramatic increase is nearly triple the number from the previous school year, when the organization recorded 3,362 bans nationwide.

Photo: Hans Jurgen Weinhardt/Unsplash

Similar to previous years, the  banning movement mostly went after books by authors of color and LGBTQ+ authors, as well as after books that address racism, sexuality, gender, and Black history, regardless of the author.

Similarly, PEN America’s latest report said that the stark increase of book bans is mostly due to Republican-led states passing new censorship laws.

PEN America’s report showed that approximately 8,000 instances of book bans took place in Florida and Iowa, as both states enforced the sweeping state laws targeting classroom material.

There has been a sustained focus on banning books written for young adults, especially when those books are about “difficult topics”, such as violence and racism, or include historically marginalized identities, mainly, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals.

According to several free speech advocates, even though book bans in public schools have recurred throughout American history, the country has never seen as many book bans as now.

The numbers of banned books in schools are at a historic high due to the culture war taking center stage in US politics, according to Deborah Caldwell-Stone, who has tracked and analyzed book bans across the country, per CNN.

A law in Iowa, signed in 2023, bans material about sexual orientation and gender identity before seventh grade. The legislation also explicitly bans books depicting sexual acts from K-12 libraries and classrooms.

Major publishers, LGBTQ+ teachers, students and parents sued to have Iowa’s law permanently overturned. But a federal appeals court overturned a temporary injunction on Iowa’s book bans, allowing the law to continue taking effect, The Guardian reported.

In Florida, any book challenged for including “sexual conduct” is pulled while under review. Such guidelines have led to a sharp increase in book bans, PEN America reported.

Utah has one of the “most extreme” bills, PEN America said, referring to the law HB 29, which says a book must be pulled from all schools in the state if at least three districts have found the title to be “objectively sensitive material”.

Photo: Kace Lott/Unsplash

“Our numbers are certainly an undercount,” reads PEN America’s report, going on to explain that stories of book bans often go unreported.

Moreover, it states the numbers do not account for “soft censorship,” meaning hesitancy in book selection, ideologically-driven restrictions of school book purchases, the removal of classroom collections, and the cancellations of author visits and book fairs.

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