Massachusetts has a better approach for book challenges: due process

Across the country, school libraries have become a recurring front in political and cultural fights, with controversial books drawing objections from parents, activists, and public officials alike.  

Let’s be clear: Parents and community members have every right to criticize what their schools make available and ask officials to reconsider particular books. That’s free speech, too.

The problem arises when one individual or group’s political views determine which ideas students can explore in their school library. Massachusetts’ Freedom to Read Law offers a promising solution, one that FIRE has long called for: due process for books.  

That means fair and clear procedures for reviewing challenged library materials. The Massachusetts law establishes significant procedural safeguards for challenges to books in the state’s public school libraries. It’s consistent with many of our recommendations, such as considering challenged works as a whole, applying legitimate educational criteria rather than political preferences, and keeping challenged books available until the review is complete.

Librarians cannot use their authority to stock shelves according to their own politics any more than school boards can use theirs to purge books because they dislike the ideas inside them.

The Freedom to Read Law also limits who may initiate a formal challenge: current students, their parents or guardians, and school staff. That helps ensure the review process is reserved for members of the school community rather than outside groups seeking to dictate what books are available to students.

Before a challenged book can be removed, the law requires notice, a public hearing, and review by a committee of school personnel. The committee must find, based on clear and convincing evidence, that the material as a whole lacks educational, literary, artistic, personal, or social value, or is not age appropriate for any student at the school.

Just as importantly, the challenged book stays on the shelf while that process plays out. Removing a book first and asking questions later can accomplish the censor’s goal before anyone has determined whether the challenge has merit.

Of course, not every decision to remove a school library book is unjustified. Schools necessarily curate their collections for reasons such as educational suitability, quality, or age appropriateness. A book might be damaged or outdated, or removed simply to make room for new volumes. But the power to curate is not a license to censor.

Massachusetts’ law strikes a good balance. It lets schools maintain age-appropriate library collections, while minimizing the risk that books will be removed for illegitimate ideological or partisan reasons.

In Board of Education v. Pico, a plurality of the Supreme Court said school boards cannot remove books simply because they dislike the ideas in them. The justices emphasized that schools must follow “established, regular, and facially unbiased procedures for the review of controversial materials.” While school officials retain significant authority to oversee library collections, that authority remains subject to the First Amendment.

The new law also says that when adding books to a collection, selected material must “be age appropriate,” “serve an educational purpose,” and “be based on the teacher’s or employee’s professional training and not on personal, political, or doctrinal views.” 

In other words, the law’s demand for viewpoint neutrality runs both ways. Librarians cannot use their authority to stock shelves according to their own politics any more than school boards can use theirs to purge books because they dislike the ideas inside them.

The Freedom to Read Law also protects school employees from punishment for good-faith decisions about library materials. Those protections can help ensure that fear of political retaliation does not dictate what students can read.

As schools implement the new law, they should also follow FIRE’s recommendation that review committees issue a written decision explaining their reasons for retaining, relocating, or removing challenged material. Written decisions enable public scrutiny, create a record for judicial review, and make it harder to disguise ideological censorship as a judgment about educational value or age appropriateness.

Book challenges are not going away. Clear procedures will not eliminate disagreement over what books belong in school libraries. But Massachusetts’ approach ensures those disagreements are settled through rules designed to keep official decisions focused on legitimate educational considerations rather than politics.

Other states should take note.