Maryland poised to lead fight against book bans at school, community libraries

A rise in challenges to books in Maryland’s schools and public libraries — including dozens recently in Carroll County schools — has put the state on a path to becoming one of the few with guardrails on book bans.

The Freedom to Read Act, which Democrats in the Maryland General Assembly are gunning to pass in the legislative session’s final weeks, would set a statewide standard for some content in libraries for the first time. Although books found to contain sexual content could still be pulled from shelves under the bill, the act has infuriated some opponents. They argue it would tie the hands of local government and school officials to eliminate materials they find unsuitable for children.

Proponents of the legislation say the standards it would set are critical at a time when parents and activists in places like Carroll and Howard counties have challenged books that primarily target stories of LGBTQ youth or that deal with race.

Nine books, such as “Doing It” by Hannah Wilton and “Red Hood” by Elana Arnold, have been permanently removed from Carroll County public school libraries. Fifty-two others have been challenged and a county Board of Education policy was approved early this year to exclude all books with “sexually explicit” content.

“The state of affairs in libraries nationwide is pretty dire,” said Sonia Alcántara-Antoine, CEO of the Baltimore County Public Library and president of the national Public Library Association.

She supports the state bill, which would prohibit public and school libraries from excluding material based on an author’s origin, background or views, as well as for partisan, ideological or religious reasons. It would require each school library system to have a uniform process for someone to request a book’s removal, and it would protect library staff who abide by the new state policies from being dismissed or otherwise disciplined.

However, the legislation does not include a specific element to prohibit bans on sexually explicit material — making it unclear whether books that were removed in Carroll County for those reasons could be restored to a school library’s collection.

The Carroll County Board of Education policy on “sexually explicit” content — which defines it as “unambiguously describing, depicting, showing, or writing about sex or sex acts in a detailed or graphic manner” — would likely be permitted to remain in effect. Such targeted local policies would not be prevented as long as they don’t conflict with the new standards, said Del. Julie Palakovich Carr, a Montgomery County Democrat who is leading the House effort to pass the bill.

“It is possible that a small number of books could still come off the shelves,” Palakovich Carr said in an interview Wednesday after fighting off complaints about the bill from some Republicans on the House floor.

Local control

Those concerns ran the gamut, from opposition to a proposed prohibition against taking a book off the shelves during the time its presence in the library is being challenged, to just the fact that the state is trying to limit some level of local control.

“There are some good amendments to the bill, but I still believe it goes too far and restricts local school systems too much in what they want to do,” Senate Minority Whip Justin Ready, a Carroll County Republican, said Thursday evening when the bill passed the Senate along party lines.

6 more books banned in Carroll public school libraries, bringing total to 9

Under current law, the state creates general guidelines and coordinates the sharing of public library resources. But library policy is largely left to the counties, each of which has a library system.

If the law passes before the annual legislative session ends April 8, public libraries would have to adopt the new state standards and create their own written policies. Failure to follow the law could ultimately result in the state withholding funding, if the Maryland State Library Board certified a library wasn’t following the law and directed the state comptroller to withhold it allocation. Democratic Gov. Wes Moore’s budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins July 1 would provide $49.5 million to library operations, broken down by county and based on population.

For school libraries, state funding would not be at risk. But they would be required to follow the same state standards as community libraries — such as those regarding making decisions in light of authors’ backgrounds, partisan views and more — and also create uniform processes for challenging and reviewing books.

Lawmakers are not outlining what that process would need to look like, but have said the period for reviewing a challenge of a book must have a “reasonable timeline” and that challenged material must be available to readers during the review. Both the Senate and the House rejected Republican-sponsored amendments to make the challenged material unavailable for at least 15 days during such a review.

The bill does not specify who would enforce the law on school systems or what should happen in cases where books have already been removed. Palakovich Carr said the implementation of the law in that sense will be decided at the local level by officials who already make those decisions in each county.

“The state of affairs in libraries nationwide is pretty dire.” — Sonia Alcántara-Antoine, CEO of the Baltimore County Public Library

Claire Hill, a parent who said she was involved in a book ban review committee from Calvert County, told lawmakers in a hearing that she believes the bill has merit, but it “needs more teeth.”

“Passage of this would only be a first step,” Hill said. “Other than some introductory comments about these ideas, the bill is silent about how to deal with the problem that is wreaking havoc in our public schools — the effort to ban and censor books.”

At the forefront

The bill is based on one Illinois passed last year, becoming the first state with a law attempting to counter the rise in book challenges. California also passed a law to fine school districts that ban books dealing with gender identify and racial history.

Even with local control built into the Maryland bill, some Republicans have denounced it, saying it would erode county authority.

“They’re trying to stop us from being able to decide what books are appropriate and are not appropriate, and after we’ve had all these months and months of these books being reviewed,” said Republican Del. Chris Tomlinson of Carroll County.

Tomlinson said if people in his county “don’t want explicit content describing rapes and detailed sexual experiences or encounters, I think we should be allowed to do that.”

Until Wednesday, the debate in the halls of the State House in Annapolis had largely avoided the kinds of explicit and out-of-context quoting of targeted books that have headlined many local meetings and even congressional debates. Sen. Jason Gallion, a Harford County Republican, said in a hearing he preferred to avoid that “shock value” approach.

Other Republicans took a different tack Wednesday in the House, where they spent parts of a 25-minute floor debate quoting from “Gender Queer.” The memoir in comic book form from Maia Kobabe about the author’s exploration of gender identity and sexuality has been one of the most targeted books across the country, including with challenges in Baltimore and Howard counties.

After reading often-quoted passages about sexual acts, Del. Kathy Szeliga, a Baltimore County Republican, said there was “very obscene language that, as a grandmother, I couldn’t possibly read on this floor.”

“It’s pornographic and it’s obscene and we should be protecting children, young minds, from this,” Szeliga said. “We don’t put Playboy, we don’t put Hustler, we don’t put other materials in school libraries, because they’re inappropriate.”

Del. Lauren Arikan, a Harford County Republican, described images in “Gender Queer” and said it was evidence that the state has “failed miserably” in following state law that already prevents “obscene” material from being shown to children.

An amendment from Republican Del. Nino Mangione of Baltimore County would have added a statewide prohibition of such material to the Freedom to Read Act. Democrats rejected the proposal, with Palakovich Carr arguing that legal precedents ensure children have a First Amendment right to receive information that some people may object to.

“They’re trying to stop us from being able to decide what books are appropriate and are not appropriate.” — Republican Del. Chris Tomlinson of Carroll County

Challenges rise

State’s attorneys in the counties of Baltimore, Carroll and Howard in recent years have rejected pleas from concerned parents asking them to say certain books violate the law.

Across Maryland, challenges to books in public libraries increased 133% between 2019 and 2023, according to a survey conducted by the Maryland State Library Agency. For school libraries, the Maryland Library Association said 112 titles were challenged in 2023, according to direct reports and news coverage. Neither those groups nor others said it had a full list of challenged books.

In the Carroll County Public Schools libraries, the parental rights’ group Moms for Liberty has challenged 61 books since last summer.

As of last month, nine books have been permanently removed from shelves, nine have been retained and will once again be available to students, and six titles will now require parental permission for a student to check out. Three were removed by librarians in the system’s yearly deselection process, said Director of Curriculum and Instruction Steve Wernick. And one, “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, will be retained in high schools, but removed from middle school shelves.

Removed books include “November 9: A Novel” and “It Ends With Us,” by Colleen Hoover; and “A Court of Mist and Fury,” and “A Court of Wings and Ruin,” by Sarah J. Maas.

A total of 33 titles await a decision, and Carroll County Superintendent Cynthia McCabe has ordered them removed until a reconsideration committee renders its decisions. McCabe declined to comment on the proposed bill while the legislature is in session.

Carroll County Moms for Liberty Chair Kit Hart said the only books she would like to see removed from schools are those that contain sexually explicit content, regardless of who wrote them, and that’s because such material isn’t age appropriate.

“[State lawmakers are] reframing the term ‘sexually explicit’ to ‘equity’ and ‘diverse books,’” Hart said. “So instead of recognizing them for what they are, which is what our school board did, they are just reframing them and using these terms that nobody can disagree with. But they’re still the same books that we petitioned to get removed.”