Intellectual Freedom: Book Challenges on the Rise
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“Intellectual freedom is the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction. It provides for free access to all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause or movement may be explored.” — American Library Association (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom
Book challenges are back in the news. If you’ve been scrolling through your social media feeds over the last couple of months, chances are you saw one of these “breaking” items:
· Washington’s Mukilteo School District removed Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird from school shelves, citing its objectionable language and “problematic” handling of race issues.
· A middle school librarian in Kent, Washington had his purchasing powers revoked when he asked the school principal to follow the process for challenging a book about an LGBTQ teenager.
· In January, a school board in McMinn County, Tennessee voted to remove the Holocaust graphic novel Maus from the school curriculum.
· The Oklahoma Legislature introduced a bill that, if passed, would pay parents $10,000 for each day a book they nominated for removal remains in the library.
· In December, a group of North Carolina moms filed a criminal complaint against the Wake County Public School System, in an attempt to have a series of books on LGBTQ+ issues removed from school libraries. “We felt like this is a violation of both state and federal statutes regarding obscene materials to minors specifically,” one member of Moms for Liberty commented.
And while authors such as Judy Blume and young adult classics such as Flowers in the Attic are trending on Twitter as part of the current spotlight on book banning, it demonstrates that challenges to intellectual freedom are not new.
The American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) tracks challenges to the collections of libraries, schools, and universities each year. In 2020 the OIF logged 156 challenges to 273 book titles, which was down from 377 challenges filed against 566 books in 2019. Given the trends over the last several months, it is expected the number of book challenges will be bigger for 2021. Each year the ALA formulates a list of the top ten most challenged books and publishes it as part of the annual celebration of Banned Books Week, which is held during the last week of September. This year Banned Books Week will be commemorated from September 18th to the 24th.
While the majority of book challenges are handled at the library or school board level, some attempts to censor, like the Moms for Liberty North Carolina case, have reached the courts. A 1924 case led to a California State Supreme Court decision on the purchase of Bibles for a school library. In 1976 a group of Ohio students and their parents sued their local school board for removing several books from library shelves and school curriculum, including Joseph Heller’s Catch 22. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Minarcini v. Strongsville City School District, 541 F. 2d 577 (1976), that while Ohio law empowered school boards to remove books from the classroom and school curriculum, it did not do so for removing books from school libraries. Calling libraries “storehouse[s] of knowledge” the court said,
“Neither the State of Ohio nor the Strongsville School Board was under any federal constitutional compulsion to provide a library for the Strongsville High School or to choose any particular books. Once having created such a privilege for the benefit of its students, however, neither body could place conditions on the use of the library which were related solely to the social or political tastes of school board members.”
The Supreme Court had similar concerns on the issue of book challenges, leading to their landmark opinion in Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico (1982).
In response to book challenges and banning attempts over the years, libraries and professional organizations have developed policies and positions on intellectual freedom, such as this statement by the Washington Library Association. The OIF has even set up a platform for reporting censorship.
For more information, you may want to check out these titles from the Washington State Law Library or search for similar materials in our online catalog:
· Intellectual Freedom: A Reference Handbook by John B. Harer, KF4770.Z9 H3 1992
· Intellectual Freedom Manual by ALA OIF, Z711.4 .I57 1996
· Smolla and Nimmer on Freedom of Speech by Rodney A. Smolla, KF4772 .N54 1996
· Free Speech on Campus by Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman, KF4772 .C54 2017
· Libraries, the First Amendment, and Cyberspace: What You Need to Know by Robert S. Peck, KF4315 .P43 1999 (LE)
