Many of the books subjected to recent bans include LGBTQ+ characters and characters of color, according to PEN America’s analysis. Credit: Shutterstock / MKPhoto12

The number of book bans in the United States nearly tripled during the 2023-2024 school year, according to a new study — and Texas was at the forefront of yanking titles from shelves. With 538 book bans enacted from June 2023 through June 2024, the Lone Star State accounted for the third-largest number of bans during that time period, free expression group PEN America reports. Only Florida, with 4,561 bans, and Iowa, with 3,671, enacted more.
In total, PEN America recorded 10,046 book bans across the U.S. during the 2023-2024 academic year, up from 3,362 the previous term. The number of unique titles also jumped during that time period, rising to 4,231 from 1,557.

PEN America officials attributed the explosion in bans to censors’ increasing efforts to have conservative politicians and Republican-dominated state legislatures do their bidding.
Texas’ GOP-controlled legislature, for example, passed a law last session that would have required booksellers to rate
public school library texts based on their references to sex. That law was ultimately blocked in federal court.
“That shift is significant, because it has fundamentally altered the scale of book banning, and the tactics and resources necessary to combat it,” PEN America said in a statement.

The 2023-2024 bans took place in 29 states and 220 public school districts. PEN America analyzed the content of every book banned in two or more places during the school year and identified common themes in their subject matter:

57% included sex or sex-related topics and content
44% included characters or people of color
39% included LGBTQ+ characters or people

What’s more, almost 60% of the banned titles are written for young adult audiences and deal with topics young people confront in the real world, including grief and death, experiences with substance abuse, suicide, depression, mental health concerns and sexual violence, PEN America said.

“Taken all together, this is hardly a narrow effort to constrain access to books by young people; it’s an effort to impose ideological control on the bounds of culture,” PEN America officials said.

In Texas, efforts to cut off access to books has continued since the end of the 2023-2024 school year. This summer, a Harlingen pastor demanded that South Texas’ Mission school district remove 676 books he and others deemed “filthy and evil.” An East Texas county also came under fire this fall after a review board moved a nonfiction book on the mistreatment of Native Americans to the fiction shelves of its public libraries. Subscribe to SA Current newsletters.

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Texas enacted the nation’s third-highest number of book bans last academic year

What’s more, almost 60% of the banned titles are written for young adult audiences and deal with topics young people confront in the real world, including grief and death, experiences with substance abuse, suicide, depression, mental health concerns and sexual violence, PEN America said.

“Taken all together, this is hardly a narrow effort to constrain access to books by young people; it’s an effort to impose ideological control on the bounds of culture,” PEN America officials said.

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What’s more, almost 60% of the banned titles are written for young adult audiences and deal with topics young people confront in the real world, including grief and death, experiences with substance abuse, suicide, depression, mental health concerns and sexual violence, PEN America said.

“Taken all together, this is hardly a narrow effort to constrain access to books by young people; it’s an effort to impose ideological control on the bounds of culture,” PEN America officials said.

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