As noted above, First Amendment school-related jurisprudence recognizes the discretion school boards and related bodies have in managing school-related affairs, including with respect to the literature available to students, as well as with respect to curricular requirements. That discretion does not negate the responsibility of the school board to engage in rigorous review processes that reflect both First Amendment safeguards and best practices. Yet, as with school libraries above, various recent instances of classroom book bans have been marred by procedural abrogation. Of 474 bans solely on curricular and classroom materials in the Index, only a handful, three, appear to have been the result of established, transparent procedures. Rather, many have been the result of ad hoc decisions and snap judgments in response to parental complaints, establishing a troubling trend.
In McMinn, Tennessee, for example, in January the school board took up and voted on removing Maus by Art Spiegelman from the curriculum at the request of a board member. Per a local community group, this decision went against the board’s existing policy, since no review committee was formed. Administrators for the Franklin Regional School District in Pennsylvania likewise recently paused teaching of Persepolis, an award-winning graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, in the district’s ninth-grade honors English classes. The board suspended the curriculum after some parents complained, even though the book had been selected after undergoing a 30-day public curriculum display and comment period last year as part of normal curricular processes, and even though teachers were days away from beginning to teach it.
In other places, district leaders have agreed to remove books even from optional reading lists for high school students, such as in Hudsonville, Michigan, where parents demanded the removal of Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, from one such list. In Pitt County, North Carolina, English language arts teachers at one middle school allegedly “canceled plans” to read five books after a single parent objected, including: All American Boys, by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely; Forged by Fire and Darkness Before Dawn by Sharon M. Draper, To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, and Night by Elie Wiesel.
Pages 12-13 of this book are now barred from being displayed to students in Williamson County, Tennessee.
The momentum behind this wave of book banning is not only local. As many news outlets have reported, book bans have become a favorite tool for state-wide and national political mobilization, departing from prior patterns whereby such bans tended to originate locally and spontaneously. Local chapters of Moms for Liberty have collated and shared lists of books to be challenged on Facebook, and pressed their case to responsive school authorities. No Left Turn in Education and Parents Defending Education have curated lists of “radical” books that they view as “indoctrination,” and have actively sought to mobilize disaffected parents under the banner of “parents’ rights.” These efforts are having a widespread impact; even where books are not ultimately banned, and even when processes are being followed, these campaigns can inspire skittishness about teaching topics that might in any way be construed as taboo. In Williamson County, Tennessee, a challenge from a local Moms For Liberty chapter resulted in only one title banned from the curriculum, but six books were ascribed “instructional adjustments.” These six books were not banned in their entirety–and therefore are not listed in the Index–but wound up with restrictions placed on specific pages. Teachers are allowed to read Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and her Family’s Fight for Desegregation by Duncan Tonatiuh, but cannot read pages 25-27 aloud to students. They can read Sea Horse: The Shyest Fish in the Sea by Chris Butterworth to students, but they cannot display pages 12-13.
The silencing effect of book bans and the threat to free expression and the First Amendment cannot be ignored. In many schools, professional educators also maintain classroom libraries, where they make available books that go beyond or differ from what is offered in the school library. The drive to prohibit and remove books is also impacting these collections, with teachers incentivized to remove books that might incur controversy. The bans themselves are often blanket in scope; in some districts, like Leander, Texas, the decision to remove eleven books from the district’s high school curriculum was accompanied by an explicit prohibition on these books being available in classroom libraries.
Cumulatively, these local challenges and national pressure campaigns are creating a climate where access to literature in school libraries and classrooms is being diminished on precisely the “highly irregular and ad hoc” basis that gave rise to First Amendment concerns in Pico. The overwhelming number of ad hoc bans reflected in the Index point to this disturbing trend, where removing books at the sign of any parental complaint — regardless of policy — is becoming expected and almost reflexive.
