For years, it’s been clear that one of the most vital ways through this era of book censorship is the legal system. The results of the ongoing spate of lawsuits are a mixed bag. We’ve seen Iowa’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which involves removal of any books from schools with so-called “sex acts” in them, be blocked and deemed unconstitutional. We’ve seen the Fifth Circuit Court say that library users have no First Amendment grounds to sue libraries for removal of books for any reason in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Librarian Brooky Parks successfully settled a lawsuit against her former public library employer, where she was terminated for speaking out against censorship; so, too, did Suzette Baker in Llano County.
Keeping track of the number of lawsuits over library censorship right now is a nearly impossible task because there are so many. Among them are suits in Tennessee and South Carolina over bans in public school libraries and public libraries respectively; a lawsuit over the use of BookLooks/RatedBooks to select school library materials in Minnesota’s St. Francis Area Schools (a state where they have an anti-book ban law, remember); and a lawsuit over Idaho’s bill that requires public libraries relocate books parents complain about or face financial penalty.
These don’t even touch on upwards of a dozen more, nor do they cover the two federal lawsuits happening over the dismantling of the Institute for Museum and Library Services (you can read a timeline of this ongoing situation, including all of the court actions on it, over here).
Another lawsuit underway right now is one that has gotten less attention than some of the others, thanks in part to the censorship issue at play taking place outside of the “typical” public library and school environment. One of the first book ban directives of the current federal administration came through the Department of Defense Education Activity schools, which fall under the directive of the Department of Defense. This creates a more direct line for federal demands than your average public school or public library–the IMLS, for example, doesn’t set policies or procedures for public libraries in the country, as those are determined on the state and local level and thus, while the financial support for libraries can be yanked as we’re seeing now, that doesn’t (yet) translate to the agency’s leader being able to demand all books on certain topics be banned from public schools. The same goes with the Department of Education and public schools. There are a lot more hurdles to jump through from the top down than with the Department of Defense’s Education Activity schools.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the administration for its book banning demands on those schools.
Today, Sam LaFrance, First Amendment Communications Strategist for the ACLU, gives background into the current book banning directive, which books are being targeted, what led the ACLU to pursue litigation, the current status of the case, and more.
*
From Kentucky to Japan, something is going on in certain public schools: books are being taken off the shelf, posters of historical figures like Frida Kahlo are being removed from walls, and Black History Month celebrations are being cancelled.
It’s all because the Department of Defense is implementing new policies banning books, classroom discussions, events, and extracurriculars that relate to race and gender in military-run schools on bases around the world.
So the ACLU took them to court.
What is DoDEA? Why are they banning books?
The U.S. Department of Defense runs public schools on their military bases around the world for children of active-duty servicemembers and civilian military personnel. The agency that runs these schools is called the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), and it operates just like any other public school district — except that it is run by the federal government and therefore is under the direct control of the Secretary of Defense and the Commander in Chief, not a local school board. DoDEA serves over 67,000 students from kindergarten through high school in 161 schools across 11 countries, seven states, Guam, and Puerto Rico.
If you compared DoDEA to more traditional school districts in the United States, it would be among the most diverse, and most high achieving, in the nation.
But in January 2025, President Donald Trump signed three executive orders that impact DoDEA and how it operates:
- Executive Order (EO) 14168 titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”;
- EO 14185 titled “Restoring America’s Fighting Force”; and
- EO 14190 titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling”
These executive orders prohibit, among other things, the use of federal funds for anything that may promote “gender ideology” or “divisive concepts,” the latter of which has long been interpreted to cover a wide array of topics related to race, sex, and American history. EO 14185 explicit instructs the military to stop “promoting, advancing or otherwise inculcating” several “un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational theories” — all of which implicate books and curricula that relate to race and gender, as we have seen in public schools around the country since 2021.
In President Trump’s words, these concepts add up to “wokeness”:
[W]e are getting wokeness out of our schools and out of our military and it’s already out and it’s out of our society, we don’t want it. Wokeness is trouble, wokeness is bad, it’s gone. It’s gone. And we feel so much better for it, don’t we? Don’t we feel better?
What exactly are they doing?
In February, DoDEA began implementing these new executive orders. In several emails to teachers and staff, administrators asked that they “ensure books potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology are removed from the student section” of the library. Parents were told that “books potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics” were to be relocated to a private section, away from students, for professional review. Teachers were asked to remove these books from their classrooms, and DoDEA told the press that they were taking steps to end “radical indoctrination” in school.
Using keyword searches, materials were identified for potential noncompliance with the executive orders prohibiting so-called “gender ideology” and “divisive concepts.” That review is ongoing at DoDEA HQ – and their decision could impact students in schools from Kentucky to Japan. In DoDEA’s own words, all of this happened in response to President Trump’s executive orders and guidance from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The impact is already being felt.
A training at a school in Germany, librarians were instructed to scan books for potential references to gender identity; one book, Both Sides Now by Peyton Thomas, was flagged as in violation because it “refers to transgender.”
A news outlet in Kentucky reported that librarians at Fort Campbell felt they needed to remove “any books that mention slavery, the civil rights movement or the treatment of Native Americans.” In that same school, an internal memo explicitly banned “monthly cultural observances” — resulting in bulletin boards about Black history being taken down, and the cancellation of similar plans for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. In an official, DOD-wide memo from January titled “Identity Months Dead at DoD,” the agency instructed all schools to cancel any “special activities and non-instructional events” related to Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Pride Month, and more.
Several books and resources were removed from the curriculum, including chapters of two AP Psychology books that discussed human sexuality and a historically accurate, grade-appropriate biography of Robert Cashier, a civil war veteran who was born female but enlisted and fought valiantly as a man in the Union Army.
This censorship extended into sex education, too. Several chapters were banned from DoDEA sex ed textbooks, including:
- “Communicable Diseases: Sexually Transmitted Diseases”;
- “Unwanted Sexual Activity: Sexual Harassment”;
- “Human Reproductive System, Menstrual Cycle, and Fetal Development”;
- “Abuse and Neglect”; and
- “Adolescence and Puberty”
The agency left no stone unturned. Even school yearbooks were implicated: no “visual depictions, written content, or editorial choices” that may indicate support for “social transition” was allowed.
All of this violates the First Amendment.
Students in DoDEA schools, just like other students in American public schools, have a right to receive information about the world around them. They have a right to read books about their own experiences or the experiences of people that are different from them, and they have a right to have their education shaped not by animus or politics but by pedagogical expertise, curiosity, and educational rigor.
What books were banned?
According to a new filing from DoDEA, 555 books and 41 curricular materials have been banned on bases around the world while they undergo review. DoDEA doesn’t want to say what those books are, but we’ve compiled a list of some titles that appear to be included, and the court ordered a full list by mid-June.
According to reporting from news outlets, plaintiffs, DoDEA itself, and other sources, these 233 books are alleged to have been quarantined or banned in DoDEA schools. Here is a selection:
- Freckleface Strawberry by Julianne Moore
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Julián Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love
- 4 entries in the Heartstopper series by Alice Oseman
- I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (and The Dozier School for Boys: Forensics, Survivors, and a Painful Past by Elizabeth A. Murray, about the school on which this novel was based).
Despite pleas from parents, students, and advocates, DoDEA has thus far refused to confirm which 555 books are officially on the chopping block systemwide. But based on what we know, as with other school districts, the vast majority of books allegedly banned within DoDEA appear to be by or about women, LGBTQ people, and people of color.
What is being done about it?
The American Civil Liberties Union, along with the ACLU of Kentucky and the ACLU of Virginia, filed suit against DoDEA in March on behalf of six families with children in DoDEA schools. These families have children ranging from kindergarten to 11th grade in schools around the world.
The suit argues that these removals violate the First Amendment. As described in the initial complaint, the removals and bans are not based on “rational, age-appropriate, evidence-based concerns” but on politics and the President’s “anti-wokeness” agenda. This limits students’ ability to think critically, learn about themselves and their neighbors, and in the case of sex ed materials, even keep themselves safe from harm.
On Tuesday, the ACLU argued in the Eastern District of Virginia that the court should grant an immediate preliminary injunction – restoring curriculum, putting books back on the shelf, and preventing DoDEA from continuing to enforce the executive orders that caused all of this. The court could issue a decision at any time and at the hearing, the court ordered DoDEA to share more information about the removed books within seven days.But the battle won’t just be won in the courtroom – student organizers in DoDEA schools have been leading walkouts in protest of these new policies, often risking disciplinary action, since January. In South Korea, 40 students participated in one such walkout, which included a flag folding ceremony and a student dressed as the Statue of Liberty. And military parents, like the ones bringing the lawsuit, have spoken out about how incongruous this spate of censorship is with their jobs: “We make sacrifices as a military family so that my husband can defend the Constitution and the rights and freedoms of all Americans,” said one such parent. “If our own rights and the rights of our children are at risk, we have a responsibility to speak out.”
Book Censorship News: June 6, 2025
Psst: it’s time to start tracking attacks on Pride-related programs, book displays, and library collections. If you’ve experienced censorship or targeted attacks related to Pride leading up to June or anytime throughout June, please document that here. It’s anonymous and will be used to catalog the ongoing attempts at Pride-related censorship (see 2023 and 2024 roundups).
- School boards, rather than trained librarians, will have far more power in deciding what books are in public school libraries in Texas, thanks to a new bill.
- A man who tried to ban LGBTQ+ books from a school in North Kansas City just pled guilty to child molestation charges. They always tell on themselves.
- PEN America’s latest report looks at how Florida has been the blueprint state for censorship over the last several years.
- As threats over books have grown, so, too, have those authors felt the threats themselves. PEN pulled together some advice for author and event safety in the wake of rising censorship and threats.
- The Matanuska-Susitna Borough Library Board (AK) is proposing a new policy where an advisory board would be set up to decide on whether or not new books could be added to the collection. This, again, completely undermines the role of trained librarian.
- Pasco Public Libraries (FL) are changing their card access levels for those under 18 and they’re going to use Common Sense Media to make professional decisions over materials in the collection.
- “A Russian book distributor has ordered bookshops to “return or destroy” works by the Pulitzer Prize-winner Jeffery Eugenides and the British bestseller Bridget Collins, among others, in the latest case of censorship targeting the country’s literary scenes.” Ongoing censorship in Russia.
- Campbell County Public Library’s (WY) got a board member going to the state legislature in favor of new laws that would ban books. This library’s been a long-time censorship hotspot with a board that is eager to push their conspiracy theories about books statewide (and nationally).
- The beleaguered Samuels Public Library (VA) may now be taken over by a private company, in a move that continues the county’s attempts to destroy this public institution (all of which, you may remember, came from a small church group in 2023). The vote was delayed this week, but this won’t be going away.
- The Brookline Public Library (MA) will be reinstating both Pride and Black Lives Matter flags in their building.
- Florida state officials demanded Hillsborough Public Schools remove books from shelves recently, and the school board held their first meeting since. Reviewing materials for removal could cost upwards of $50,000. (From May 23: The state of Florida threatened legal action against Hillsborough County Schools for not removing enough books from shelves, so now the district is removing upwards of 100s. Anything on the lists in this thread has to go. This is deep overreach of the actual Florida law, fwiw.)
- More in Hillsborough: “Education officials mused about firing librarians or exploring criminal charges if the county doesn’t remove more materials.”
- “A popular and well-respected librarian for the Bad River Public Tribal Library in northern Wisconsin, who was laid off by the Trump administration in April, has recently returned to work.” This is what will be lost if the IMLS is defunded in 2026, as proposed in the current budget draft.
- The former Crawford County Public Library (AR) director has sued the library for defamation and breach of contract.
- This is good news, though it comes from fear of potential litigation and not an actual change of heart: Rutherford County Public Library (TN) has rescinded its policy to ban books by or about transgender people from young people.
- Members of the MAGA city council at Huntington Beach (CA) are so worried that they’re going to see their dismantling and censorship of the local public library voted out that now, they’re “promising” not to ban more books and promising not to sell the library. Sure, Jan.
- A republican lawmaker in Connecticut chose to read passages from Me and Earl and The Dying Girl on the floor during budget debates to “make a point” about “inappropriate” books in schools. This isn’t how any of this works. NO ONE is reading these books aloud in public for shock value.
- And the performance above didn’t matter. Connecticut passed their anti-book ban bill.
- New book censorship policies in Columbia County, Georgia, libraries, have some parents unhappy. Here’s another story on this.
- Can any of the books banned from public schools across South Carolina be reinstated?
- The Kite Runner will not be banned in a Cary, North Carolina, high school.
- Weird that most parents in Katy Independent School District (TX) don’t agree with rampant book bans and policies directly targeting trans students. Almost as if this has and continues to be an extremist movement.
- A look at the battle over labeling, restricting, and removing books in Hartland Cromaine District Library (MI).
- “The ideology of ALA leadership, which Moffitt described as being in “direct opposition” to his Christian worldview.” This is one of the four points a Meeker Regional Library (CO) Board made about why he doesn’t like the American Library Association. This is the kind of person who has a lot of responsibility in a public library, espousing nonsense conspiracy theories.
- Remember how Alberta, Canada, was working to codify book banning (err, “parental rights”)? Conservatives in British Columbia want the same.
- Mississippi Valley Library District (IL) employees are working toward unionizing. One big reason? To protect themselves from the library board which is censorious.
- Library board members in Lapeer Library (MI) are still pushing for age restrictions to books in the public library collection.
- Despite ongoing censorship, Maine libraries are working to bolster their LGBTQ+ collections.
Source : How The ACLU Is Responding to Book Bans in US Military Schools: Book Censorship News, June 6, 2025
