More people are tuned in to what’s happening in public libraries and public schools than ever before. This is a good thing and it is also long overdue. Many have been shouting about this from the rooftops and from the streets for years.
This tuning in means that the continuing onslaught of awful library bills being proposed across various U.S. states is getting more attention. Again, a great and beyond necessary thing. But with the kind of reception and blasting that librarian criminalization bills are seeing on social media and in the broader media, it’s worth noting that none of these bills are new. Are they connected to what was laid out in Project 2025? Absolutely. However, these bills began long before Project 2025 was spelled out because we, as Americans, have been living the Project 2025 playbook since at least 2021.
What Are Librarian Criminalization Bills?
The common theme of the legislation dubbed “librarian criminalization bills” is that they are all bills which would remove obscenity protections against library workers. Obscenity protections are usually part of state legal codes that ensure those people working in educational institutions like libraries, schools, and museums are able to provide a wide breadth of material to serve their constituents. Those protections intend to curtail frivolous lawsuits against people working in places where materials of all kinds might be present.
Here’s the thing: there is not obscenity in these institutions. Obscenity is defined by the three-part Miller Test:
- whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;
- whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and
- whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
Key phrase repeated twice in the Miller Test is “as a whole.”
Obscenity exemptions are in place not as an admittance of inappropriate material. They’re there to protect the freedoms of expression allowed in these public institutions. They’re there to ensure that materials provided are true and accurate — some people might not like that the library has books about sex, sexuality, and puberty, but they’re allowed to be there and available to people who would like to read them.
Librarian criminalization bills seek to remove these obscenity exemptions for library workers and open up the flood doors to accusations of library-supported and distributed obscene materials. Librarian criminalization bills want to make it open season on libraries, much like we’re seeing in Idaho, where any parent who doesn’t like something in their public library can simply sue the library.
At this point, we know for a fact obscenity is defined in whatever way best serves those who are itching to cry victim. This includes books by or about people of color and/or books by or about queer people. It also includes wide swaths of books about disability, about puberty, about gender and sexuality, and about any topic that could be shoved under the new administration’s definition of “DEI” — literally anything not about straight, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, wealthy, white Christian men. They eradicate any voices outside that narrow scope through book bans; they erase anyone helping to provide access to those materials by criminalizing them.
There are other bills that would criminalize librarians. We’ve seen this in Louisiana, for example, which attempted to criminalize librarians by targeting their affiliation with the largest professional organization for library workers, the American Library Association. This bill did not pass. Louisiana’s bill targeted librarians, whereas Iowa’s 2025 deprofessionalization bill proposal targeted libraries (noting, of course, that vagueness in this bill would open the door to applying the law to individual library workers).
For the sake of this piece and for the purposes of understanding the proliferation of a specific type of librarian criminalization bill, the focus is on changing obscenity protections for library workers.
A Recent History of Librarian Criminalization Bills
Some of the groundwork for these bills was set in 2021 as we saw a spate of bills specifically targeting “obscene” or “inappropriate” materials in public and public school libraries. Those bills were built upon rhetoric spewed by far-right groups who were in the grips of beginning their campaigns of book banning. It was 2021 when our current era of book banning really took off, starting with complaints from No Left Turn in Education in spring 2021 and exploding in the fall, as Moms for Liberty’s roots were growing. The challenges to books came following the same groups’ calls for “reopening the schools” after COVID — schools were never closed but had gone virtual — to unmask the kids and anti-vaccine campaigns.
The 2022 legislative session brought several librarian criminalization bills. Among the states that brought bills were Idaho, which failed at the time; Pennsylvania, which died in committee; and Missouri, where this provision of a bill that passed was struck and, thus, not applicable. Indiana also proposed two librarian criminalization bills, both of which failed.
More states attempted such bills in 2023. Among them were Indiana, which failed; two bills that failed in Kansas; Tennessee, which failed; several bills in Texas that all failed; and multiple bills in West Virginia, which all failed.
Despite consistently failing, bills targeting librarians with criminalization abounded in 2024. You’ll notice many states that failed to have such bills progress previously gave them another shot. Again, all of these bills are based on manufactured narratives about what is inside libraries, and their purpose is to go one step beyond banning the books. They’re there with the intention to destabilize and deprofessionalize the work of librarians, making for an easy way to defund them. That’s not to say that the people behind these bills don’t want libraries to exist. They do. They just want them to be privatized, for-profit institutions catering only to a specific demographic of people — not the whole of a community, which is the explicit purpose of democratic institutions like libraries.
2024 bills came from Alabama, which failed to progress; Indiana, which failed; Kansas, which failed; Louisiana, which failed; Minnesota, which died in committee; Missouri, which died in committee; Nebraska, which died in committee; Tennessee, which failed; Virginia, which died; West Virginia, which died; Wisconsin, which failed to pass; and Wyoming, which died.
Idaho’s librarian criminalization bill from 2024 passed, but the bill did not change the criminal code in the state. The bill allows for parents to challenge books and sue if the materials are not moved or removed to their preference, but this is at the library, rather than individual, level. That said, it’s a bill intended to create a chilling effect statewide, encouraging library workers to silent/quiet censorship, rather than providing service as fully as possible to meet the needs of the entire community. So while it’s still a criminalization bill — i.e., it opens up lawsuits from the public and potential sanctions from the judicial system — it is different than those noted above.
The Lingering Effects
Ultimately, whether or not these bills fail does not matter to their sponsors. They start to sow seeds of distrust in public institutions like libraries and school while encouraging people to listen to the politicians who are there to “care about the kids.” These bills encourage more similar bills both within the states where they didn’t pass, as well as in other states.
The 2025 response to new bills has been much louder and more widespread than before, and it’s also been the year we’ve seen such bills be rushed through the system at breakneck speed. In Iowa, Helene Hayes put her target on public libraries right away, floating several anti-public library bills all built upon the same lies about “obscene material” that no one can seem to actually give examples of (because such things do not exist). Her librarian criminalization bill was proposed on February 10 and advanced through committee just days later, making it crystal clear she and her cronies knew it would be a deeply unpopular bill with Iowa citizens. The same day it passed out of committee, a similar Senate bill was then pumped through the system.
That said, it is noteworthy that the response to Iowa’s bill was louder and more widespread than when such bills were in serious contention in Louisiana and Alabama just one year earlier. Will those states see similar pushback this year? It’s hard to say, but it is important to note that years of anti-southern state sentiments, especially among “good” “pro-library” folks outside of the south, has only further disenfranchised and harmed the hardworking folks on the ground who’ve been not only doing the work since day one but who have been shouting loudly for help.
What’s On The Docket for 2025
As we progress through the 2025 state legislative sessions, it’s your job to reach out to your representatives against bills like these. Provide them information about how libraries are well-respected, how they are institutions beloved and trusted by parents, and that they are not in any capacity distributing “obscene” material. Most people do not agree with book bans and most people want their libraries to survive. Find data and information to support your argument linked throughout this guide on how to be proactive against censorship.
The following states have drafted and/or advanced librarian criminalization bills so far this year. This information is current as of March 10, 2025. You can track updates and further disruptive and dangerous bills through EveryLibrary’s bill tracker. Their ongoing updates about legislation impacting libraries were helpful for developing this timeline, and they have been on the front lines of protecting the future of libraries before — and especially during — this era of ongoing attacks.
North Dakota is also floating legislation that would mirror much of Idaho’s in allowing lawsuits against schools which do not comply with their updated “obscene materials” definition. Texas is doing similarly and could hit libraries with up to $10,000 in fines for violating their new rules.
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Book Censorship News: March 14, 2025
- In the long-running, exhausting, years-long story of a handful of church members trying to ruin Samuels Public Library (VA) — which has involved attempting to defund the library via the county, then the installation of a new county oversight board that isn’t the library board — the county has now voted to defund the library. This will remove nearly 70% of the budget for this library that serves more than this small group of church folks.
- There aren’t a lot of details quite yet, but here’s some huge news: Llano County has reached a settlement with Suzette Baker, the librarian who would not ban books that she was being pressured to remove. The lawsuit was over her wrongful termination.
- South Carolina’s state book banning committee is considering the removal of 10 more books statewide.
- A look at attempted and successful book bans in Rhode Island.
- This book banning pastor, who has caused a scene in several libraries across several states, is now being paraded around Texas libraries.
- A Missouri bill would ban so-called “pornographic” content in library databases — no such thing exists, mind you — and punish libraries that provide such access.
- Lee’s Summit Public Schools (MO) are creating a beautiful liability for themselves by allowing parents to list up to 20 books their children cannot borrow from the school libraries. Imagine what happens when one book slips by or (GASP) the kid reads the book in the library? The school’ll get sued.
- Vermont leaders are warning about an increase in attempts to censor and ban books is about to hit.
- Remember that Minnesota is a state with an anti-book ban bills when you read that Stillwater Schools have restricted access to some of their LGBTQ+ books.
- Moms For Liberty has donated right-wing propaganda to Hernando Public Schools (FL). This got a whole-ass news story in the local paper, y’all.
- Five+ more books have been banned in Rutherford County Schools (TN). The books are Catch 22, Assassination Classroom (Vol. 1-8, 11), Perfect Chemistry, Water for Elephants, and Yolk.
- “Temporary” book bans almost never are. Rockingham County, Virginia, schools just outright banned the six books they had “temporarily” banned last year.
- “At candidates’ night in Atkinson last week, the library trustee race was by far the most hotly contested, with the moderator saying there were so many written questions from residents ‘about ratings and pornography and drag queens and who should police what children can see’ that he would have to pick and choose.” This piece is over the manufactured panic in libraries over “indoctrination” and queer books throughout New Hampshire.
- Speaking of New Hampshire, here’s how the current public library board election in Goffstown could fundamentally change that public library.
- New policies in Keller Independent School District (TX) will have The Bible being reviewed again. It will also now require any book being considered for purchase in the district to be given 30 days for public opinion and input. What an absolute slap in the face for professionals in the district.
- The Missouri Secretary of State just suspended payments to OverDrive over manufactured panic related to “naughty books.” This disproportionately harms the poorest, the most marginalized, and those with the least access to books, period.
- A freedom to read bill is getting closer to reality in Rhode Island.
- Nebraska’s bill to make it easier for parents to know what’s in their kids’ school library collection is closer to passage. This is just a reminder that those pushing for such bills are so illiterate they don’t know how to use an online catalog. If it’s not on the school website, they can just ask, but that’s too much work.
- “Concerns over the content of children’s books at the Lynchburg Public Library [VA] have sparked a conversation drawing parents and community members to a city council meeting. The controversy centers on books containing LGBTQ+ themes and what some describe as ‘woke’ content.” But I thought they weren’t trying to ban these kinds of books? I guess that message no longer matters as we live in a free-for-all-homophobia-and-racism culture now. One proud local republican claims there are over 120 books she dislikes in the collection.
- The Lapeer Public Library (MI) director has resigned. Relatedly, just two weeks ago, there was this blowup at the library’s board meeting.
- Nice, nice, nice: A controversial former city council member will be the newly appointed member of Garfield County Libraries in Colorado. This system has been under attack for years. This appointment will not be helping the cause.
- Alpena Public Schools (MI) are now in the midst of trying to “streamline” their library collection policies. In other words, make it easier for material to be pulled off shelves. Recall in this piece about the ongoing attacks on the collection at Alpena Public Library that it was believed this would make its way to the schools.
- After pulling books from the shelves, Radnor Schools (PA) will actually revisit their policy on doing this.
- Another update on the lawsuit in New York where a chapter of Moms For Liberty have sued a school district for not removing books from the collection that they don’t like.
- Brevard County Public Schools (FL) put up an intentionally biased committee to review several books. The committee has recommended banning three titles. The final decision on the future of the books goes before the full board later this month.
This week here on Book Riot: Moms For Liberty is shutting down their BookLooks review website — but it’s not cause for celebration yet.
