US education department ends ‘hoax’ investigations into book bans

A decision by the US education department to end their investigations into book bans in the country has sparked backlash from advocacy and civil liberties groups.

The DOE’s Office for Civil Rights announced on Friday that it had dismissed 11 complaints related to book bans and it will no longer employ a “book ban coordinator” to investigate local school districts and parents.

There has been a flurry of attempts to ban or remove books from school libraries and classrooms across the US in recent years, with the vast majority of attempts targeting books that are written by or about people of color and the LGBTQ+ community, according to the free speech organizations that track book-banning efforts.

PEN America, a non-profit aimed at protecting free expression, has tracked more than 10,000 public school book bans in the 2023-2024 school year.

The official DOE press release refers to the book ban investigation initiative as a “hoax”. It goes on to justify book bans as school districts and parents having “established commonsense processes by which to evaluate and remove age-inappropriate materials”.

The American Library Association (ALA), which has argued that book banning should be considered a form of censorship, documented 4,240 unique book titles targeted for censorship, as well as 1,247 demands to censor library books, materials, and resources in 2023.

The ALA released a statement in response to the DOE’s actions, stating: “In their cruel and headlong effort to terminate protections from discrimination for LGBTQIA+ students and students of color, the Department of Education advances the demonstrably false claim that book bans are not real. Book bans are real.” It goes on to say that “the new administration is not above the US constitution”.

The coalition group Authors Against Book Bans called the Trump administration’s move to eliminate the position of book ban coordinator “grossly un-American” and “in direct conflict with freedom of speech”.

“We stand with families, students and educators across the country who exercise free speech every time they open a book, and with the 71% of Americans who are opposed to book bans,” the coalition’s statement reads. “Book bans do not protect children; history teaches us that they are a terrifying step toward tyranny.”