Schools, libraries, and curriculum should be inclusive of and accessible to all students, families, and communities. Yet right-wing extremists and their allies in the Trump-Vance administration are following the Project 2025 playbook and pushing a censorship agenda that threatens our democracy. Across the country, the federal government, state agencies, school boards, and other public officials supported by taxpayer dollars are being pressured, coerced, and forced into pulling books from shelves, ripping out pages of curriculum, and eliminating decades of progress toward diversity and representation. Censorship not only threatens who we see and hear from — it threatens the very fabric of our participatory democracy.
Libraries offer so much more than books – they promote learning, community, and acceptance. In spite of these core democratic values – or perhaps because of them – school and public libraries are under attack. While the Trump-Vance administration’s policies have accelerated and intensified attacks on libraries, this assault on the freedom to read is not a new phenomenon that started on January 20, 2025. According to PEN America, between 2021 and 2023, extremists implemented nearly 6,000 book bans in school libraries, spanning 41 states and 247 unique school districts. While the bans are widespread, extremists’ targets are narrow. The primary books being targeted feature diverse characters – including LGBTQ+ characters and characters of color.
Democracy Forward has a robust legal practice at both the state and federal levels that is dedicated to protecting libraries. We are working nationwide with librarians, parents, students, authors, and advocates to protect libraries and the freedom to read.
Responding to Threats to Libraries and the Rise of Censorship
Stopping Funding Freezes on Library Services
- Protecting the Institute of Museum and Library Services: Democracy Forward represented the American Library Association (ALA), the largest library association in the world, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the largest union representing museum and library workers, and successfully blocked the Trump-Vance administration’s gutting of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). IMLS is a non-partisan and independent agency dedicated to supporting and funding museums and libraries and museums, and the crucial community services they provide in every state across the country. (American Library Association v Sonderling)
Fighting Censorship in States
- Challenging Censorship at Local Library Boards in Prattville, Alabama: Democracy Forward is representing a group of Alabama families and librarians in a suit to stop policies approved by the local library board that threaten to keep constitutionally protected books like To Kill a Mockingbird and 1984 off of public library shelves. The library board’s harmful policies include measures that allow the board to prevent libraries from acquiring any books marketed to minors that include material on a broad and easily malleable “selection criteria,” as well as ways to use the arbitrary criteria to remove existing books from library shelve The case is pending before the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. (Read Freely Alabama v Autauga-Prattville Public Library Board of Trustees)
- Joining in the Fight Against Book Ban Challenges in Florida: Democracy Forward also represents Read Freely Alabama in a pair of friend-of-the-court briefs submitted to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in support of two cases challenging school library book removals. The first case, Parnell v. Escambia County School Board, was brought in 2023 by the authors of children’s book And Tango Makes Three as well as an elementary school student against two
Florida school boards for the removal of the book from school libraries. In the second, Penguin Random House, et al v. Gibson et al, a group of book publishers, authors, and parents successfully prevented enforcement of a Florida law that allowed widespread book bans in school libraries. (Parnell v. School Board of Escambia County and Penguin Random House, et al v. Gibson et al)
Supporting Parents in the Work to Stop Discriminatory Book Bans: Democracy
Forward represents three parents of Florida public school students the lawsuit argued that the 2023 Florida Legislature’s H.B. 1069 and its implementing rules discriminate against parents who oppose book bans and censorship. The statutory and regulatory scheme gives parents who favor removing books from school libraries access to a formal process to challenge a local school board’s decision to keep a book on school shelves, while parents opposed to book removals are excluded from that same review process. The new law also requires local school districts to pay for the cost of the appellate process, regardless of the outcome, incentivizing book removal. The district court ruled in favor of the state Board of Education and dismissed the case in January
2025, and the parents appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
That decision is still pending. (Tray, et al. v. Florida State Board of Education, et al.)
Protecting Librarians and Teachers
- Stopping a Law Criminalizing Librarians in Arkansas: Democracy Forward joined a coalition of librarians, booksellers, and readers in successfully preventing portions of an Arkansas law that threatened to criminalize librarians and booksellers from taking effect. The challenged provisions of Act 372 would have forced librarians and booksellers to work under a vague and looming threat of criminal prosecution that encouraged self-censorship and severely limited readers’ access to books in libraries and bookstores. The broad coalition of librarians, libraries, authors, publishers, readers, and booksellers, including the Arkansas Library Association, Advocates for All Arkansas Libraries, and Garland County Library Director Adam
Webb, filed suit to challenge the law and a court issued a final ruling in favor of the coalition in December 2024. (Fayetteville Public Library et al v Crawford County et al)