PEN America published recent data on book bans and removals just in time for Banned Books Week.
Key findings indicate that most books challenged by censorship advocates this past year focus on LGBTQ+ subject matter. Additionally, Iowa and Florida are currently the two worst states for book bans amid Republican-backed content restriction laws.
The PEN America data indicates that more than 10,000 books were removed from the shelves of school libraries across the country during the 2023-2024 academic year. The tally of removed books climbed triple-fold from last year’s tally of 3,362 removals.
Also, the American Library Association’s latest data additionally tracked 695 ban attempts with 1,915 unique titles challenged. Challenges, per this dataset, showed a slight decrease but further substantiated the finding concluded by PEN that most books targeted dealt with LGBTQ+ materials or sexuality.
These are sobering tallies as we draw ever closer to the 2024 presidential election and the number of civil liberties concerns riding on the final result. While Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have their own concerning positions, like Harris’ inconsistencies on FOSTA-SESTA and Section 230, the real concern, unsurprisingly, is on the Republican ticket, Donald Trump and JD Vance.
Trump and Vance offer a very real opportunity for the Heritage Foundation’s fascist Project 2025 to become a reality.
And, some of the key proposals outlined by Project 2025’s policy document, Mandate for Leadership, deal with adopting laws that could strip the First Amendment rights of millions of individuals. I wrote for Techdirt awhile back about the project’s effort to outlaw “pornography.”
Kevin Roberts, current president of the Heritage Foundation and now-alleged dog killer, wrote:
“Look at America under the ruling and cultural elite today:…children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.”
“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection.”
“Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as an illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.”
“Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders…“
Considering his words, the ‘Project 2025-worldview’ is a feigned belief held by far-right MAGA populists that young adult literature featuring a gender-diverse protagonist is tantamount to a feature film streaming on Brazzers.
And, it reminds us that those who are pushing book bans are also pushing laws that restrict consensual and legal online porn through inequitable age verification laws.
It’s an inconvenient, but unsurprising, truth. Consider Russell Vought of the Center for Renewing America as an example.
Vought is a Christian nationalist and former Trump administration official. His center previously published model legislation that would implement age verification requirements on virtually all websites with content the sponsor deems to be obscene or indecent to minors.
That model legislation was drafted in a way to justify age-gating and censorship of material that isn’t even legally considered “porn.” A case can even be made that this model legislation could be used to age-gate access to information about reproductive rights or LGBTQ+ mental health.
Vought was caught on hidden camera by undercover journalists not that long ago. He was pitching Project 2025 to the journalists posing as potential donors.
During the conversation, he said they intend to ban porn through a “back door.” The “back door” he refers to is the adoption of legislation that mandates age verification, like what was adopted in Texas. As I’ve covered extensively in my reporting and analysis, Texas lawmakers adopted House Bill (HB) 1181 in 2023.
Adult industry stakeholders, led by the Free Speech Coalition, sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to block the enforcement of HB 1181.
After a sordid litigation history in district court and the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. Free Speech Coalition et al. v. Paxton has developed into a landmark First Amendment case with broad implications.
Figures like Vought have openly advocated for book bans in addition to age verification measures that specifically target porn. And they do so without regard for the First Amendment.
An amicus brief filed in support of the Free Speech Coalition and the porn companies in the pending Supreme Court case makes this argument.
The amicus brief, filed on behalf of literary rights groups and book publishers, highlights the overlapping nature of book bans and age verification requirements.
The brief argues, “At a moment in which the political appetite for book banning is at an upswing, scaling back the searching review of such content-based restrictions poses an especially concrete threat to access to constitutionally protected materials.” Age verification is a “content-based” restriction.
Laws prohibiting access to books because of the content are virtually similar to laws prohibiting access to certain websites due to that content. Any argument to suggest otherwise is moot.
Michael McGrady covers the tech and legal sides of the online porn business.
