School Book Bans Fell From a 2023-24 Peak. They're Still Double What They Were in 2021.

Book bans surged, then fell from a 2023-24 peak, but remain well above pre-2021 levels

According to PEN America's Index of School Book Bans, the primary organization tracking this issue nationally, the number of book bans rose from 2,532 instances in the 2021-22 school year to 3,362 in 2022-23, then spiked to 10,046 in 2023-24, before declining to 6,870 in the 2024-25 school year. Even with that recent decline, the current level remains more than double the 2021-22 baseline, and PEN America's cumulative count since 2021 has reached nearly 23,000 total instances across 45 states and 451 public school districts.

It's worth being explicit that PEN America is a free-expression advocacy organization, not a neutral government statistical agency, meaning its specific definitions and counting methodology (each district-level removal of the same title counted separately, for instance) shape these totals; but its Index remains the most comprehensive, most frequently cited dataset available on this specific issue, and its underlying case-level data is publicly searchable for independent verification.

The bans are heavily concentrated in a small number of states

Three states, Florida, Texas, and Tennessee, accounted for roughly 80% of all bans recorded in the 2024-25 school year. Florida led with 2,304 instances, followed by Texas with 1,781 and Tennessee with 1,622. Other states with high district-level activity included Iowa (3,798 in a separate, differently-scoped 2025 count) and Pennsylvania (737), illustrating that while a handful of states drive the large majority of the national total, the practice extends considerably beyond just the top three.

What kinds of books are actually being targeted, and how that's shifted recently

• Bans have disproportionately targeted books by authors of color, LGBTQ+ authors, and women, along with books addressing themes of race, gender identity, and sexuality, according to PEN America's content analysis across the full 2021-2025 tracking period
• PEN America's Spring 2026 research specifically documented a doubling of nonfiction censorship, over 1,100 unique nonfiction titles banned, including textbooks, biographies, and general reference books on history and science, a shift the organization describes as extending well beyond the fiction and young-adult content that dominated earlier banning waves
• The most frequently banned individual book across the 2021-2025 period was John Green's Looking for Alaska, followed by Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes, a novel centered on a school shooting
• In July 2025, the federal government became directly involved for the first time in this specific way: the current administration removed nearly 600 books from Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) schools, which serve children of military families, marking new federal-level involvement in an issue that had previously been driven almost entirely by state and local action

Public opinion research suggests bans are broadly unpopular, even as the practice has expanded

The National Education Association, citing its own polling, states that most Americans oppose book bans specifically, even as the practice has become more common through what NEA describes as the efforts of "a few extremist politicians" and, more recently, federal action. Separately, PEN America and allied groups have pursued legal challenges: in April 2025, PEN America joined three students and their parents as plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit against the Rutherford County Board of Education in Tennessee, arguing certain book removals violated students' First Amendment right to receive information and authors' right to free expression.

The core disagreement

Supporters of increased parental and community control over school library content generally argue certain books, particularly those containing sexual content or material some parents consider inappropriate for the age of students who could access them, shouldn't be available in school settings without parental knowledge or consent, and frame this as a matter of local community and parental authority over children's education, not censorship in the broader sense. Opponents, including PEN America and the American Library Association, generally argue these removals disproportionately target marginalized voices and perspectives specifically, that vague legislative language has empowered a relatively small number of organized activist groups to drive mass removals far beyond individual parental concerns, and that removing books rather than restricting access by age or offering opt-outs represents a more sweeping restriction than necessary to address legitimate parental concerns. Both sides broadly agree this remains a genuinely fast-moving, high-volume area of ongoing legal and legislative activity, with new federal involvement in 2025 adding a dimension to the debate that didn't exist in its earlier, more purely state-and-local phase.