If the topic of this hearing is book banning as commonly understood—government forcibly prohibiting the publication or reading of books—it is addressing an existential threat to liberty. But if it is addressing what is often called “banning” —public schools or libraries removing books from shelves, or public schools removing titles from recommended or required class readings—this is a very different topic. The violation of liberty occurs with the existence of public libraries and schools, institutions for which all, diverse people must pay, but unless librarians or other authorities select books at random, or purchase every book ever published, must elevate the speech and values of some over that of others.
The fundamental liberty violation of government picking and choosing “winning” and “losing” books is more acute in public schools than public libraries. Both, to be sure, involve compelled support of speech by government, but schools are tasked with directly shaping children, in a system of compelled attendance, whereas no one is required to obtain what public libraries offer. Public libraries tend to offer more choice for users than public school libraries, and certainly than public school readings lists and assignments.1
For these reasons, and because my area of expertise is education, my comments focus on public schools.
Neutrality in Education is Impossible
There is no question that public schooling—education in government-funded and run schools—requires that government decide what ideas are taught and made available in schools. This can be done in different ways—state education officials, school boards, librarians, or teachers making final decisions—but all are government entities or employees. This inherently empowers one group to impose on others, whether it is a state government or school board majority, or employees such as librarians. It also inherently involves elevating some deeply held values over others, whether that is deciding to remove an LGBTQ-themed book from a library because it violates the religious beliefs of some district families, or keeping it with the goal of promoting an accepting society. Indeed, the very idea of “neutral” education—education that favors no idea or worldview—is not itself neutral. Elevating “neutrality” over worldviews that believe that some things are inherently good and others inherently bad, and that children should be taught what those are, is a values-driven decision, concluding that neutrality more valuable than teaching some things are right and others wrong.
Public Schooling Forces Conflict and Government Bias
Conflicts over what books are stocked or taught in public schools are a consequence of the impossibility of neutrality in education, and public schooling requires government to decide what books are or are not assigned to students or stocked in libraries. These have ballooned over the last few years. The Cato Institute’s Public Schooling Battle Map, which I maintain, has tracked values- and identity-based conflicts in public schools consistently since 2012, including a specific “reading material” category. That category involves conflicts about library books and assigned or recommended readings. In 2012 we recorded 27 battles under that heading. In 2022, we recorded 131.2
There has clearly been a spike in such conflicts. But they are also not new, testifying to the inherent problem of public schooling requiring government to come down for or against specific books.
Public schooling has fostered reading battles since essentially its earliest days in the late-1830s. Indeed, two waves of violence shook neighborhoods around Philadelphia in 1844 over whose version of the Bible—Protestant or Roman Catholic—students would read in public schools. By the time the Philadelphia Bible Riots had ended, tens of people were dead, hundreds injured, and millions of dollars in property damages inflicted, including the destruction of several churches.3
Fast forward to the 1970s and Kanawha County, West Virginia, where the “textbook wars” also resulted in bloodshed. There, conservative and progressive communities in the district battled over the appropriateness of hundreds of texts proposed for adoption by the district, including The Autobiography of Malcolm X and George Orwell’s Animal Farm. It pitted residents with conflicting political and moral views against each other to determine what every student would or would not be exposed to in the public schools for which all had to pay. The conflict included significant violence, including shootings and bombings of the board of education office and several school buildings.4
Book “banning” efforts in public schools are, of course, not restricted to conservatives, though conservatives have driven more challenges to books over the last few years than liberals. To Kill a Mockingbird, for instance, has been a repeated target for removal from readings lists. In 2022, it was removed from the ninth grade required reading list in the Mukilteo School District in Washington State. Some people found its repeated use of the N‑word unacceptable, and it has been accused of having a “white savior” theme.5 In 2020, the Burbank Unified School District in California prohibited teachers from using To Kill a Mockingbird, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and other books for those and other reasons.6
There is no clear line between educational and enlightening, offensive and degrading. But public schooling requires that government draw one anyway.
Can Neutrality in Readings be Achieved?
Though neutrality is not actually neutral, is it possible for public schools to have unbiased reading assignments and library collections? Should they?
The latter question is crucial and contested. In Island Trees v. Pico (1982), the U.S. Supreme Court grappled—unsuccessfully—with public schooling and library holdings.7 “Unsuccessfully,” because the Court was unable to attain majority agreement on the function of public school libraries vis-à-vis the First Amendment, and issued a ruling that presented a muddle concerning democratic control of education. The Court plurality argued that school boards can generally enforce “community values,” but maybe not in libraries, which serve a special First Amendment function of enabling students to freely choose among diverse perspectives. But a majority did not support that view, and the only concrete decision was to return the case, in which the Island Trees school board had removed several books from district libraries, to a lower court for trial rather than the summary judgement in favor of the board issued in District Court.
Research by professor Kirsten Slungaard Mumma suggests that district library book acquisitions are influenced by community political majorities, with greater voting margins for Republicans correlating with less likelihood to stock liberal titles and greater likelihood to stock conservative.8 Which should be expected: School board members, superintendents, and librarians are human beings, and almost certainly would prefer to satisfy members of the public rather than spark disputes. This is supported by a 2022 School Library Journal poll that found 33 percent of librarians reporting that “possible reaction from parents” caused them to not purchase a book, and 22 percent worrying about “possible reaction from administrators/school board” and “from the community.”9
Of course, this is not neutral. But it is consistent with basic democracy as long as it reflects the majority will, and public schooling is often lionized as a quintessentially democratic institution.10 If it is intended to be truly democratic, it should reflect majority will.
Of course, that is a problem for the political minority. They might well have to pay taxes, and de facto attend, schools which exclude their views. But were librarians or superintendents to override decisions supported by the political majority, a district would move from democratic control to rule by expert—an inherently undemocratic system and no less a threat to liberty and equality than majority rule. And experts, like all people, have biases of their own, and may well act on them unconsciously if not consciously. This is especially problematic when vetting what books are “worthy” of inclusion in libraries with finite space, especially if the experts tend to have a bias in a particular direction. Such a bias seems to be the case for librarians, at least based on limited data. A 2023 analysis of partisan political contributions found that 91 percent of “library directors” gave to Democrats, versus 9 percent to Republicans, and 88 percent of “library technicians” gave to Democrats, versus 12 percent to Republicans.11
Public Schooling Is the Problem, Choice the Solution
Government truly banning books—forcibly prohibiting the publication or reading of books—would be a clear and existential threat to liberty. But removing books—or not purchasing them to begin with—from public schools is not the same thing. Public schools are inherently about shaping young minds, and both their mission and the inescapable reality of finite space demand that public school employees or officials make decisions about what books enter and are used in the schools. Of course, public schools are government schools, rendering public schooling itself the root violation of liberty because it necessitates government deciding what books to “ban.”To solve the problem, government must get out of the funding and running schools and move toward allowing funds to follow students to schools that families choose. Immediately, that would remove it from the position of having to decide what books children will read or have access to in school libraries. This is what we are seeing in states across the country, with numerous universal school choice programs enacted in just the last year, including in Iowa, Oklahoma, Utah, and Florida.
Constitutionally, the federal government has no authority to promote choice in the states, but it can fund choice in three instances: in Washington, D.C., for military families, and on Native American reservations. Congress would do well to examine the possibility of expanding choice in those areas. Otherwise, its role is to leave states and the people alone to determine what their education policies will be.
