A new report reveals the vast majority of those demanding book bans are organizations or officials — not individual parents.
Seventy-two percent of demands to censor books in schools have come from organizations that include elected officials, board members and administrators, according to the American Library Association.
Parents only accounted for 16 percent of book ban demands, while individual library users made up five percent.
“The movement to ban books is not a movement of parents, but a movement of partisans who seek to limit our freedom to read and make different choices about things that matter,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the organization’s office of intellectual freedom, said in a statement.
The American Library Association can “trace many of the challenges to lists of books that have been distributed by Moms for Liberty and other groups,” Caldwell-Stone told ABC News.
Moms for Liberty is a far-right group considered an extremist organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The most common reasons cited for challenges include “false claims of illegal obscenity for minors,” “inclusion of LGBTQIA+ characters or themes,” and “topics of race, racism, equity and social justice,” according to the American Library Association.
“As the organized attempts to censor materials in libraries persist, we must continue to unite and protect the freedom to read and support our library workers, especially at a time when our nation’s libraries are facing threats to funding and library professionals are facing threats to their livelihood,” American Library Association President Cindy Hohl said in a statement.
More than 5,000 books were challenged in the U.S. last year, a sharp drop from 2023’s 9,021 books.
However, the American Library Association attributes this drop to underreporting, rules prohibiting library workers from purchasing certain books requiring them to be placed in a certain area and legislative restrictions.
Several states — including Florida, Iowa, Texas, and Utah — have passed laws restricting what school librarians can acquire and provide to students in recent years.
The most challenged books last year included All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.
