TN ranks third for most books banned in schools

Angele Latham

USA TODAY NETWORK – TENNESSEE

Tennessee has the third highest number of book bans in school libraries across the nation, according to a yearly report by First Amendment literary advocacy group PEN America.

The report documents book bans implemented during the 2024-2025 school year — totaling nearly 7,000 across the nation — and counts a total of 23,000 cases of book bans across 45 states and 451 school districts since the organization began tracking in 2021.

The rapid rate of increase over the four years of data tracking is “unprecedented and undeniable,” the report states.

“The overarching theme of this year is the normalization of book banning,” said Sabrina Baêta, a senior program manager at PEN America’s Freedom to Read program. “It’s an everyday dance. It has become normal to hear about book bans in your school district, normal to think about censoring. This is a widespread censorship crisis across the country, and book bans are a bellwether for larger issues of free expression.”

The report states that over the last school year, at least 1,623 books were banned in Tennessee.

The Volunteer state is preceded by Florida and Texas, which had 2,304 and 1,781 bans, respectively.

“Book censorship in schools has reached a new apex, now becoming a routine and expected part of school operations, particularly in states like Florida, Texas, and Tennessee,” the report states.

According to reporting by The Tennessean in February, the state has seen a dramatic increase in book bans over the past few years.

Between 2021 and July 2023, only about 300 books faced similar challenges across the state. Between December 2023 and January 2025, however — less than half of the previous timeframe — at least 1,389 books were found to be removed or heavily age-restricted statewide over the past year.

In addition, PEN America’s data shows that book bans are becoming “normalized” in public schools, with school districts facing pressure from changing state laws and larger, coordinated campaigns from political groups.

In addition, the report states, schools are facing pressure from the federal government’s efforts to restrict material that mention LGBTQ+, race, or sexual education topics, alongside state-mandated bans, which prohibit specific titles statewide.

But what is most striking about the data this year, Baêta said, is that the number of books banned nationwide went down slightly from last year — not because the efforts to restrict books slowed, but because there is simply isn’t much left to ban.

“What books are left?”she said. “This is one of the things I really try to stress, is the question ‘what’s even left to ban?’ Especially when you’re looking at the content areas — it is becoming a wider and wider the circle of censorship. What we (are dealing with) is actually so much worse.”

What is a book ban?

PEN America’s report defines a school book ban as “any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by governmental officials, that leads to a book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished.”

The data PEN America has is likely an undercount of the actual books banned across the nation, Baêta says, as the organization relies on local reporting — like The Tennessean’s — to collect the data. But in areas where books are removed before they face complaints, it is nearly impossible to track the numbers.

“Our definition of ‘book bans’ wasn’t meant for a crisis of this level,” she said.

How books are being targeted is changing, data says

The forces implementing book bans and removals are shifting from previous years, the data shows.

In 2021, the book banning crisis was mostly centered around grassroots influence over school boards, the report details, with special-interest groups like Mom’s for Liberty and waves of individuals lobbying school board members to remove books based on the content within.

Over the last several years, however, that has expanded.

Now, state legislatures like the Tennessee General Assembly have passed laws restricting educational materials and library books.

Tennessee passed the Age-Appropriate Materials Act State in 2022, creating restrictions on and enforcement of what is accessible to children in public school libraries.

The law requires each public school library in the state to publish a list of materials in their collections and periodically review them to make sure they are “appropriate for the age and maturity levels of the students who may access the materials,” and to remove materials that do not meet the numerous parameters listed in the law.

The law also removed the legal exception currently protecting librarians and other school personnel from being charged with a criminal offense over the presence of such materials in libraries.

Laws like these across the nation, often written with vague language, push state departments of education and school superintendents to issue varying directives for schools, “causing confusion,” according to the report.

At the same time, a push has been made by local elected officials to remove books considered to have “explicit content,” with most books being targeted those with LGBTQ+ content.

Tennessee expanded the Age-Appropriate Materials Act in 2024 to prohibit public school libraries from having books with “nudity, or descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence, or sadomasochistic abuse,” or any book that is “patently offensive … or appeals to the prurient interest.”

While this expansion ensnared books such as “ Bioethics: Sex, Genetics and Human Reproduction” by Warren Reich and “Date Violence” by Elaine Landau, both removed in schools in Monroe County between December 2023 and January 2025 according to an analysis by The Tennessean, it especially targeted books that discuss gender identity of LGBTQ+ issues, for their discussion of sex-related identity concerns, as well as books that deal with issues of race or racism.

In recent months in Sumner County, the county Library Board chair tried three separate times to pass a ban on all books, in both school and public libraries, that make “mention of pertaining, promoting, or subjecting a minor to transgender or gender confusion ideology.”

The policy failed each time.

“Transgender topics in books are a huge feature in our content analysis, and a hugely targeted topic in libraries across the country,” Baêta said. “Especially considering what percentage of books in a library even detail transgender topics.”

Still, such pressure does see impact: according to the report, many school administrators across the nation are preemptively removing books before they can receive any complaints, like in the case of Monroe County.

The county preemptively removed 574 books between December 2023 and January 2025, according to an analysis by The Tennessean, ranging from a book on Holocaust, to Animal Farm and an Eyewitness: Africa book.

“It’s become normal for school districts to obey in advance and comply with legislation even if they’ve faced no complaints,” Baêta said. “The fear of the legislation is enough to get them to remove a book…. it’s an attack on all of public education.”

The report notes an ironic example: that of a free speech manual handed out to students in a Virigina school district in August 2024 that school leaders later requested be returned for containing alleged “adult satire.”

Federal actions threaten to “normalize” censorship

In addition to state-level policies, the federal government has taken an active position in the topic of book banning since the Trump administration began in January.

The administration, according to the report, has “mimicked rhetoric about “parents’ rights”” which, in Florida and other states, has largely been used to advance legislation pertaining to school book bans.

In January, President Donald Trump released a series of Executive Orders, including “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism” and “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing.”

Although none of these orders explicitly mentioned removing books, some were cited in the July 2025 removal of almost 600 books from Department of Defense Education Activity schools on military bases.

Students of these schools, along with their families, filed a First Amendment lawsuit in response.

Amid direct action from the administration to remove books, the U.S. Department of Education declared book bans “a hoax,” removing a federal position within the Office of Civil Rights that investigated allegations of discriminatory book bans and dismissing all of its cases.

In June, a divided Supreme Court sided with a group of parents who wanted to remove their elementary school children from class when storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters were read in public schools — another move that favors claims of religious discrimination over other values, like gay rights.

Baêta said the accumulation of actions like these are creating a climate of normalized censorship.

“We’ve become so acclimated to censorship in our backyards that it’s hard to even remember that this should be crazy,” she said. “This should be un-American. This should be, at times, unconstitutional.”

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