Keeping Up and Checking In

A recent ruling in Escambia County, Florida, struck down a First Amendment challenge to the school board’s removal of And Tango Makes Three, a children’s picture book about two male penguins raising a chick. The decision rested on a deeply concerning premise: that neither authors nor patrons (students) hold First Amendment rights with respect to a library collection. In other words, the court said: you have no constitutional right to expect certain perspectives and ideas to be made available.

The 2024–2025 school year marked the fourth consecutive year of unprecedented book bans in the United States. According to PEN America’s Banned in the USA report, book censorship has become routine in public education, no longer an exception but an expectation. Between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025, the report documents 6,870 instances of book bans across 23 states and 87 school districts, affecting 3,752 unique titles and nearly 2,600 authors, illustrators, and translators.

In the United States, the First Amendment is supposed to limit the government’s power to censor protected speech. But a growing tactic among public officials involves sidestepping formal mechanisms and instead using informal threats, political pressure, or public browbeating to chill speech they find objectionable. It’s a playbook that allows powerful figures to signal consequences without triggering a formal First Amendment violation—unless the public calls it out for what it is. That’s exactly what happened when the FCC Chairman made veiled threats to Disney and broadcasters when referencing comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue.

Imagine walking into a classroom where every student can browse shelves filled with stories that reflect them. Classics, contemporary works, nonfiction, poetry… they’re all there. That’s what a thriving classroom library offers: curiosity, identity, empathy, critical thinking. It’s an incubator for readers and thinkers and a tool teachers can use to regulate and manage a classroom. But when legislation is broad, vague, and punitive, these libraries, especially their diverse, student-facing collections, are among the first casualties.

In 2021, Anne Russey was disturbed by the amount of book challenges she noticed in her Texas school district—they all seemed politically driven. Then came an almost-disaster with author Jerry Craft. A small group of people protested his upcoming school visit, claiming his graphic novels that depict aspects of his son’s true experience of being a Black student in a predominantly white school were promoting Critical Race Theory. Much to Anne’s dismay, the district pulled his books off the shelves and canceled the visit. “The claims were outrageous and demonstrably false. I was thinking about not just kids of color but ALL kids—my kids—missing out on being able to access these stories.” Ultimately, the district ended up reviewing the book in a committee, putting it back on the shelves, and rescheduling the author visit. But it left Anne wondering what other books were being taken off the shelves for political reasons.

Across the United States, the escalating wave of educational censorship—book bans, restrictions on curriculum, and ideological litmus tests for teachers—isn’t happening in a vacuum. These efforts are not simply about shielding children from “concerning” content. They are part of a broader, well-funded strategy to undermine public education and accelerate the expansion of privatized alternatives like charter schools and voucher programs.

In the fight for the freedom to read, we tend to picture censorship as a stack of banned books, an angry speech at a microphone, or a harshly worded policy. But some of the most potent censorship doesn’t look like a ban at all. It looks like a budget line. It sounds like: “If you keep those books on the shelves, you’ll lose funding.” It arrives as a quiet memo: “To avoid risk, cancel the author visit.” It’s a school board lawyer advising, “Let’s remove the display until the legislature finishes its review.”

A new national survey of 4,096 secondary English teachers offers urgent insight into how censorship unfolds in K‑12 schools, and who really bears the burden. This research, published in Reading Research Quarterly, is a pivotal resource for advocates of intellectual freedom, educators, and community organizers pushing back against book bans. Read the full report here.

When a controversial new education policy makes headlines, like book bans, curriculum restrictions, or changes to what students can learn about history or identity, it’s easy to assume it appeared overnight. But in reality, new laws go through a multi-step process before they become rules enforced in classrooms and libraries.

In communities across the country, parents, educators, and students are showing up to school board meetings, city council sessions, and library trustee hearings to fight censorship and defend the freedom to read. But let’s be honest: sometimes you speak up, and the vote goes against you anyway. The board bans the book. The policy passes. The resolution gets tabled.