A large majority of attempts to ban books in the US last year came from organised groups rather than parents.
72% of demands to censor books were initiated by pressure groups, government entities and elected officials, board members and administrators, reported the American Library Association (ALA). Just 16% of ban attempts were made by parents, while 5% were brought forward by individual library users.
“These demands to remove and restrict books and other library materials are not the result of any grassroots or popular sentiment,” read the ALA’s 2025 State of America’s Libraries report, published on Monday. “The majority of book censorship attempts are now originating from well-funded, organised groups and movements long dedicated to curbing access to information and ideas.”
Many of the organisations leading the book censorship movement are so-called “parental rights” groups – most prominently Moms for Liberty. This group has strong ties to the Republican Party and has been labelled “extremist”.
“They aren’t always moms, they don’t always have kids, and they definitely don’t care about ‘liberty’ for everyone else,” wrote the American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina’s Paul Bowers in late 2023.
The share of censorship attempts made by organised campaigns has risen drastically in recent years. Between 2001 and 2020, pressure groups, board members, administrators and elected officials challenged an average of 46 titles per year. In 2024, these groups challenged 4,190 titles.
The most common reasons for challenges were claims of obscenity, the inclusion of LGBTQ+ themes or characters, and the discussion of race, racism and social justice.
“The movement to ban books is not a movement of parents, but a movement of partisans who seek to limit our freedom to read,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s office for intellectual freedom.
In its report, the ALA also published a list of the 10 most challenged books of 2024, which included books by Toni Morrison and John Green. The most-challenged book was All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir Manifesto by George M Johnson, about the author’s experience as a queer Black man growing up in New Jersey and Virginia.
Last August, Moms for Liberty filed a petition to a court in New York seeking an injunction to remove All Boys Aren’t Blue from a school library. The book “contains numerous profanities and lewd content” and “several instances of pornography including sexual molestation”, read the petition.
The second most-challenged title was Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, while the tied third most-challenged were The Bluest Eye by Morrison and The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. Other books on the top 10 list include Looking for Alaska by Green, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews and Sold by Patricia McCormick.
The number of attempts to censor library books and other materials fell between 2023 and 2024, from 1,247 to 821, resulting in a fall in the total number of books challenged from 9,021 to 5,813.
The ALA said that the fall in documented censorship could be due to under-reporting or cases of “censorship by exclusion” which occurs when, for example, library workers place books in less accessible areas of the library due to fear of controversy.
Documented censorship attempts may also have fallen because recent legislative restrictions on books containing “controversial themes” have resulted in those titles being removed from libraries, according to the ALA.
