Alabama library denied funding because it won’t move classic book ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’; AL.com, January 15, 2026

 

• Williesha Morris

, AL.com; Alabama library denied funding because it won’t move classic book ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

"In a meeting fraught with crosstalk and tension, the Alabama Public Library Service board voted to withhold state funding to the Fairhope Public Library. The library kept some flagged books, including “The Handmaid’s Tale,” in its teen section instead of moving them to the adult’s section...

At issue is about $22,000 in state funding. Since the showdown began, the library has raised more than $100,000 in community donations. 

Fairhope librarians must move the following “sexually explicit” books to the adult section to receive state funding:

• “Beyond Magenta” by Susan Kuklin
• “Crank” by Ellen Hopkins
• “Doing” It by Hannah Witton
• “Identical” by Ellen Hopkins
• “Lighter Than My Shadow” by Katie Green
• “Shine” by Lauren Myracle
• “Sold” by Patricia McCormick
• “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood
• “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas
• “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky

Most of these books have appeared on banned book lists for years, including lists created by conservative groups like Clean Up Alabama and Moms for Liberty...

This is the first time that the state library board denied funding based on book placement. In 2024, the board decided to update the state code mandating libraries move books that were “inappropriate” for children to the adult section."

Documentary ‘The Librarians’ explores book bans and the fight for intellectual freedom; Mountain Times, December 31, 2025

Mountain Times; Documentary ‘The Librarians’ explores book bans and the fight for intellectual freedom

"Saturday, Jan. 3, and Sunday, Jan. 4, at 3 p.m.—WOODSTOCK—A timely documentary examining the rise of book bans and censorship across the United States will screen in Woodstock this weekend as part of the Woodstock Vermont Film Series. “The Librarians” will be shown at Billings Farm & Museum, with a special post-screening Q&A featuring producer Janique Robillard following Saturday’s screening.

“The Librarians” follows a group of librarians who find themselves on the front lines of a national battle over access to books and ideas. As efforts to remove books from schools and public libraries intensify in states such as Texas and Florida, librarians are emerging as unlikely defenders of democracy and the First Amendment. The film centers in part on the so-called “Krause List,” which targeted more than 850 book titles—many focused on race, identity, and LGBTQ stories—and helped fuel a wave of coordinated censorship efforts nationwide.

Through personal accounts and on-the-ground reporting, the documentary captures the mounting pressure librarians face, including harassment, threats, and legislation that criminalizes aspects of their work. As the debate escalates from local school board meetings to organized political movements at the state and national levels, “The Librarians” traces how access to information becomes a battleground over whose stories are allowed to be told.

By examining the broader consequences of restricting access to books, the film underscores how controlling ideas can shape communities—and why defending intellectual freedom remains a critical issue in contemporary civic life.

The screening is part of the Woodstock Vermont Film Series, which presents documentaries and narrative films that spark conversation and deepen connections to the wider world. Screenings take place on select Saturdays and Sundays at 3 p.m. in the Billings Farm & Museum Visitor Center Theater through March 22. Tickets are $15 for general admission and $12 for Billings Farm & Museum members.

The series is curated and directed by filmmaker Jay Craven and produced by Billings Farm & Museum with support from community sponsors. 

For more information, visit: billingsfarm.org/filmseries."

Supreme Court Will Not Hear Little v. Llano County; Library Journal, December 16, 2025

Lisa Peet, Library Journal; Supreme Court Will Not Hear Little v. Llano County

 "THE LONG GAME

While this is a disheartening development for the plaintiffs, Dan Novack, VP and Associate General Counsel at PRH, feels that a favorable precedent could still be set at the Supreme Court level. PRH has several cases in play, including Penguin Random House LLC v. Robbins, challenging Iowa’s SF496 in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Penguin Random House LLC v. Gibson , fighting Florida’s HB 1069 in the Eleventh Circuit. Both are scheduled to be heard in early 2026.

Given that it only takes about one percent of the cases put forward to it every year, “when there is a traffic jam of cases, as there is in this emerging area of law, it’s really not uncommon for the Supreme Court to sit back and let it play out,” Novack told LJ. If the other cases are also decided against the freedom to read, the Supreme Court may not see the need to step in. But if rulings are split, it may choose to take on one of the cases.

If the Supreme Court had taken Little v. Llano, it could have resulted in a positive ruling coming sooner. But “I’m taking the longer view that it’s good to be presenting more options to the Court, and if they were to take a Penguin Random House case, I feel very strong about the merits of those cases,” said Novack.

Even Llano County’s attorney, Jonathan Mitchell, in his brief in opposition to the writ of certiorari asking the Supreme Court to review the Fifth Circuit ruling, stated that “The Court should wait and allow these [circuit] courts to weigh in on whether and how the Speech Clause applies to library-book removals before jumping in to resolve this issue.”

Novack acknowledges that this decision is a hard one for Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. “Something went very wrong in the Fifth Circuit,” he said. But PRH and its council are committed to a multi-year fight that could potentially reach the Supreme Court and set precedent for the right to read throughout the United States.

“Although our lawsuit has come to a disappointing end,” Leila Green Little, lead plaintiff in the case, told LJ, “I am encouraged by the many people across the country who continue our fight in the courtrooms, their local libraries, and our state and federal legislative chambers.”"

Freedom To Read; Mt. Lebanon Magazine, November 24, 2025

Merle Jantz, Freedom To Read; Freedom To Read

"Patrons will tell you: There’s a lot to love about Mt. Lebanon Public Library. Award-winning programs for all ages, knowledgeable and committed staff members, a wide and lovingly curated collection of items from multiple media and plans for a building renovation. Enough good stuff to make it a thriving community hub. But one thing stood out above all the rest, and caught the eye of the Pennsylvania Library Association’s Library of the Year selection board, which chose Mt. Lebanon from among 630 public libraries, marking the first time any Allegheny County library has received the award. The library is the commonwealth’s first (and at press time only) book sanctuary.

The Chicago Public Library and the City of Chicago launched the first book sanctuary in 2022, declaring themselves a space for endangered stories and calling for others to join the movement. Currently, there are 5,361 book sanctuaries across the country.

What’s a book sanctuary? 

It’s a space where access to books and the right to read them are protected. A book sanctuary is committed to doing at least one of the following:

• Collecting and protecting endangered books
• Making those books broadly accessible
• Hosting book talks and events on banned books featuring diverse voices
• Educating others on the history of book bans and burning
• Upholding the First Amendment rights of all citizens 

This means the library will not remove or relocate any materials from the library’s collection, as long as those materials meet the standards of the approved policy."

Missouri court strikes down 2022 law that pulled library books off shelves; Missouri Independent, November 18, 2025

ANNELISE HANSHAW, Missouri Independent ; Missouri court strikes down 2022 law that pulled library books off shelves

"A Jackson County Circuit Court judge struck down a state law criminalizing school employees for supplying “sexually explicit material” to students, ruling it unconstitutionally vague and overbroad in a five-page decision Monday.

“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,” Gillian Wilcox, the ACLU of Missouri’s director of litigation, told The Independent. “It is a real insult to their training and professionalism for the government to think that it knows better what books belong in those schools, and it’s an insult to parents as well.”

The now-void law, passed by Missouri lawmakers in 2022, expanded the state’s regulations on pornography to create the offense of providing explicit sexual material to a student. It applied only to those “affiliated with a public or private elementary or secondary school in an official capacity.”

The law is part of a larger trend placing higher scrutiny on what books are offered by libraries and schools. In Missouri, efforts earlier this year to place new restrictions on digital libraries and expand the officials who could face prosecution were debated but did not pass."

‘Every kind of creative discipline is in danger’: Lincoln Lawyer author on the dangers of AI; The Guardian, October 20, 2025

Nadia Khomami  , The Guardian; ‘Every kind of creative discipline is in danger’: Lincoln Lawyer author on the dangers of AI

"The writer has his own battles with AI. He is part of a collective of authors, including Jonathan Franzen, Jodi Picoult and John Grisham, suing OpenAI for copyright infringement...

Connelly has pledged $1m (£746m) to combat the wave of book bans sweeping through his home state of Florida. He said he felt moved to do something after he learned that Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, which had been influential to him, was temporarily removed from classrooms in Palm Beach County.

“I had to read that book to be what I am today. I would have never written a Lincoln Lawyer without it,” he said. He was also struck when Stephen Chbosky’s coming of age novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower, “which meant a lot to my daughter”, received a ban.

He and his wife, Linda McCaleb, help fund PEN America’s Miami office countering book bans. “It’s run by a lawyer who then tries to step in, usually by filing injunctions against school boards,” he said. “I don’t believe anyone has any right to tell some other kid they can’t read something, to usurp another parent’s oversight of their children.”"

The Normalization of Book Banning; PEN America, October 1, 2025

 Sabrina Baêta, Tasslyn Magnusson, Madison Markham, Kasey Meehan, Yuliana Tamayo Latorre, PEN America; The Normalization of Book Banning"

"Introduction

In 2025, book censorship in the United States is rampant and common. Never before in the life of any living American have so many books been systematically removed from school libraries across the country. Never before have so many states passed laws or regulations to facilitate the banning of books, including bans on specific titles statewide. Never before have so many politicians sought to bully school leaders into censoring according to their ideological preferences, even threatening public funding to exact compliance. Never before has access to so many stories been stolen from so many children.

The book bans that have accumulated in the past four years are unprecedented and undeniable. This report looks back at the 2024-2025 school year – the fourth school year in the contemporary campaign to ban books – and illustrates the continued attacks on books, stories, identities, and histories.  

This report offers a window into the complex and extensive climate of censorship between July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025. Our reporting on book bans remains a bellwether of a larger campaign to restrict and control education and public narratives, wreaking havoc on our public schools and democracy."

‘State-driven censorship’: new wave of book bans hits Florida school districts; The Guardian, August 16, 2025

Olivia Empson, The Guardian ; ‘State-driven censorship’: new wave of book bans hits Florida school districts

"A new wave of book bans has hit Florida school districts, with hundreds of titles being pulled from library and classroom shelves as the school year kicks off.

The Republican-dominated state, which has already had the highest rate of book bans nationwide this year, is continuing to censor reading materials in schools, bowing to external pressures in an effort to avoid conflict and government retaliation.

“This is an ideological campaign to erase LGBTQ+ lives and any honest discussion of sex, stripping libraries of resources and stories,” William Johnson, the director of PEN America’s Florida office, told the Guardian.

“If censorship keeps spreading, silence won’t save us. Floridians must speak out now.”

Book bans have been rising at a rapid rate across the US since 2021, but this latest wave comes after increased pressure from the state board of education in Florida.

The board issued a harsh warning to the Hillsborough county school district in May, saying that if they didn’t remove “pornographic” titles from their library, formal legal action could ensue. More than 600 books were pulled as a result, and the process was expected to cost the district $350,000.

The books taken off the school shelves included The Diary of Anne Frank and What Girls Are Made of by Elana K Arnold. None of them were under formal review by the district, and they hadn’t been flagged by local parents as potentially inappropriate. Parents with children in the school system even had the opportunity to opt their children out of a particular reading, without removing them from the class for everyone.

PEN called the board of education’s mass removal in Hillsborough county a “state-driven censorship”, and concluded “it is a calculated effort to consolidate power through fear, to bypass legal precedent, and to silence diverse voices in Florida’s public schools,” in their press release.

Fearing similar retribution, nine surrounding school districts have taken proactive measures, pulling books which they are worried could cause similar controversy. This includes Columbia, Escambia, Orange and Osceola, who have followed suit and quietly complied, probably to avoid similar state retaliation.

“Censorship advocates are playing a long game, and making Hillsborough county public schools bend the knee is a huge win for them,” said Rachel Doyle, who goes by “Reads with Rachel” on social media.

Doyle has two children in the Hillsborough school district system and is frustrated that they are being used as political pawns. She feels that her voice has been erased by far-right groups like Moms for Liberty and that parental rights groups do not have her kids’ best interests in mind.

“I do not want or need a special interest group or a ‘concerned citizen’ opting out for me,” Doyle said. “Once Florida becomes a place where this is the norm entirely, other states will follow.”

In Escambia county, one of the nine school districts that have taken books off their library shelves after the Hillsborough removal campaign, 400 titles have been removed without review. These include I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, and Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, a satirical anti-war novel centered around a prisoner of war in Dresden after the Allied bombings in the second world war.

What is happening in Florida is part of a broader, nationwide censorship drive fueled by conservative backlash against teachings about race, gender and diversity.

Unsurprisingly, red states on average have seen higher instances of banned reading materials, with Florida accounting for 4,561 cases of prohibited titles this year, spanning 33 school districts.

These bans often target authors of color, female writers and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Books that educate about any of these experiences, or that document historical periods, are the recipients of frequent censorship attacks.

Rob Sanders, the author of several acclaimed children’s books like Ruby Rose and Peaceful Fights for Equal Rights, and a former Hillsborough county educator, has seen many challenges to his books in Florida and beyond.

“If we eliminate every book that tells a story that is different than the life experiences of an individual or a family, there will be no books left in the library,” Sanders said.

“As an author, the best thing I can do for children is to keep writing books that tell the truth and that celebrate the wonderful diversity in our world.”

Efforts to restrict or protect libraries both grew this year; Iowa Capital Dispatch, July 23, 2025

ROBBIE SEQUEIRA | STATELINE , Iowa Capital Dispatch ; Efforts to restrict or protect libraries both grew this year

"State lawmakers across the country filed more bills to restrict or protect libraries and readers in the first half of this year than last year, a new report found.

The split fell largely along geographic lines, according to the report from EveryLibrary, a group that advocates against book bans and censorship...

The geographic split among these policies is stark.

In Southern and Plains states, new laws increasingly criminalize certain actions of librarians, restrict access to materials about gender and race, and transfer decision-making power to politically appointed boards or parent-led councils.

Texas alone passed a trio of sweeping laws stripping educators of certain legal protections when providing potentially obscene materials; banning public funding for instructional materials containing obscene content; and giving parents more authority over student reading choices and new library additions.

In contrast, several Northeastern states have passed legislation protections for libraries and librarians and anti-censorship laws.

New Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Island and Connecticut have each enacted “freedom to read” or other laws that codify protections against ideological censorship in libraries."

Librarians on the frontline; MV Times, July 31, 2025

Abby Remer, MV Times; Librarians on the frontline

"Kim A. Snyder’s “The Librarians,” screening at the Grange Hall on August 1, is part of the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival’s 25th anniversary Summer Celebration Series.

The powerful, deeply chilling documentary exposes the complexities surrounding the rising tide of book bans in libraries over the past five years, and the courageous heroes who battle against them. 

Snyder, an Oscar-nominated and Peabody-winning director, opens the documentary with Ray Bradbury’s unsettling words from “Fahrenheit 451”: “It was a pleasure to burn. It was a specific pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.”

She goes on to weave together tense school board meetings with intimate interviews of librarians on the frontlines who have been fired, harassed, and stalked as they defend books about race and LGBTQ topics. Snyder enhances current real-life events with clips from old movies that rail against librarians and endorse book-burning, reflecting how scarily close reality has come to art. 

The first voice we hear is that of a distressed librarian who is backlit to remain anonymous. “I never imagined that what’s happening now could ever happen. It didn’t dawn on us that we’d come under attack. We never imagined we’d be at the forefront … We’re stewards of the space, of the resources. We’re stewards for the people … Now we’ve moved into the vanguard.”

Throughout the film, we meet librarians in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida as they face fierce opponents — including politicians, the right-wing organization Moms for Liberty, and conservative school boards — while defending access to books that reflect students’ lives. Although their passion is evident, it is even more powerful to watch clips of students testifying or sharing informal moments about their experiences, as they are the ones harmed by the removal of books that speak to their truth. One teenage student at a school board meeting stands at a podium, confronting the members: “The job of the superintendent and school board is not only to protect students in this district, but to make them feel like they have a place in this community. I have got to tell you, from what I’m seeing so far, you are failing at your job … Stop the censorship in our district. Wake up to the reality that we are all different, and we should embrace each other with love and not blatant hate.”...

At the film’s end, the anonymous librarian comes forth on camera, leaving us with her words, “I can’t stay in the shadows anymore … I won’t be censored, just like we can’t let them keep censoring the stories in our books. What I do know is that our story is still being written. But now it’s everyone’s story.”"

ALI VELSHI BANNED BOOK CLUB WITH THE MOST BANNED AUTHOR IN THE COUNTRY; The Philadelphia Citizen, July 28, 2025

 ALI VELSHI, The Philadelphia Citizen; ALI VELSHI BANNED BOOK CLUB WITH THE MOST BANNED AUTHOR IN THE COUNTRY

"While book bans have fallen out of the news cycle, the assault on information and the freedom to read continues to be deployed against our libraries, schools, and the general public. Ali Velshi points out that since January 2025, 133 bills have been introduced in 33 states that would negatively affect libraries, librarians, and access to literature. 

This legislation seeks to cut funding, restrict literary content, and even criminalize school librarians, all with the ultimate goal of censorship.

Fortunately, particularly in red states, citizens are standing up for their rights and successfully fighting these efforts. Coalitions of libraries, publishers, families, nonprofits, and other activists are organizing, protesting, testifying, putting pressure on elected officials, and filing lawsuits.

Velshi Banned Book Club’s very first member, George M. Johnson, author of All Boys Aren’t Blue and Flamboyants, returned to discuss state and school district book bans, legislation, and the lawsuits challenging them. “The lawsuits are helping in a myriad of ways,” says Johnson. “You have to go through the discovery process, that’s when you really start to realize what the true motives are.”"

Michigan Library Association launches petition to protect right to read; WKAR, July 28, 2025

Ed Coury , WKAR; Michigan Library Association launches petition to protect right to read

"The Patmos Library, located in the small western Michigan town, faced backlash over its inclusion of LGBTQ+-related material. Voters chose to withhold public funding for the library in 2022, effectively defunding it. Community members later raised nearly $100,000 to keep the library operational.

The association’s petition drive is supported by a statewide Epic-MRA poll conducted in June. Commissioned by the Michigan Library Association, the poll found that nearly 80% of voters approve of the work being done by libraries in the state, and 75% trust librarians to make decisions about which books should be available.

The Michigan Library Association says it hopes the petition will send a clear message to lawmakers about the value residents place on intellectual freedom and access to information."

The Revolution Will Be Card Cataloged: Dispatches From The Law Librarian Frontlines; Above The Law, July 25, 2025

 Joe Patrice , Above The Law; The Revolution Will Be Card Cataloged: Dispatches From The Law Librarian Frontlines

"In his keynote address, Roosevelt Weeks, the Fort Bend County library director, reaffirmed the core values of the profession to serve the public and preserve knowledge. And that calling requires librarians to be both “strategic and subversive,” prompting a cathartic release from an assembled body battered by an assault of budget cuts and book bans. Step outside the comfort zone to make sure the money people understand the library’s importance and make sure the customer gets the knowledge they seek at a time where powerful interests keep throwing up roadblocks. It sparked the librarian equivalent of running through a wall after a locker room speech: filing out of the room in an orderly fashion."