Utah Releases First List of Books To Be Banned Statewide

Weeks after Utah became the first state to pass a law allowing statewide book bans, it has released the first list of books that will be banned in every public school in the state.

The United States has experienced an unprecedented rise in book bans and challenges as conservatives lead the book-banning movement. In recent years, numerous Republican states have begun passing legislation to make it easier for book bans to occur. Many of these laws require school and teachers to pull books from shelves or face heavy fines and even potential jail time.

Florida has led the nation in book bans, with Gov. Ron DeSantis and the hate group Moms for Liberty trying to make it a “felony” for teenagers to check out books in the library. However, Utah has recently emerged as the state with the most extreme book-banning laws, which include allowing books to be banned in the entire state if just a few school districts complain about them.

Utah to ban 13 books statewide

Utah recently passed House Bill 29, which allows books to be banned in every school in the state if they meet certain requirements, such as being deemed “objective sensitive material” by three school districts. Also, teachers and librarians aren’t just told to remove the books that make the statewide ban list but ordered to dispose of them. It’s unclear what kind of disposal is expected, but during board meetings about the bill, conversations arose about throwing the banned books in the dumpster or burning them.

Now, the state has officially announced the first 13 books that will be banned statewide. These are just the first-ever books to be banned statewide in Utah—more are expected to follow. The banned books include the entire A Court of Thorns and Roses series and Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Mass. The other banned books are:

Blankets by Craig Thompson

Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

Tilt by Ellen Hopkins

Forever by Judy Blume

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood

What Girls Are Made Of by Elana K. Arnold

Book banners most frequently target LGBTQ+ books but it seems that Utah placed its focus more heavily on romance novels and books that tackle issues like abortion, intimacy, addiction, and abuse from a female perspective. Since the state has been fighting hard to enact a near-total abortion ban, it’s not surprising that the Utah Board of Education wants to strip every girl in the state of any books that acknowledge their bodies, sexuality, and rights.

As mentioned above, books can make the statewide ban list if they are found by three school districts or two school districts and five charter schools to amount to “objective sensitive material.” The law was applied retroactively, meaning schools were encouraged to re-evaluate books they had previously banned to see if they met the objective sensitive material criteria. As a result, the 13 statewide banned books all faced initial bans from individual school districts. What’s interesting is how few school districts challenged these books originally.

Of all the books on the list, only two faced bans from five school districts, while the majority had only been challenged by three. For reference, Utah has over 42 school districts, 132 charter schools, and 600,000 students. It doesn’t seem fair that if 3 school districts complain about a book, all 42 school districts will be stripped of it. Of course, this was always the goal of House Bill 29 and book banners in general. They want to make it so that if one or two parents or school board members don’t like a book, they can easily take it away from every single resident in the state.

After all, the people who want these books banned are far outnumbered by those who don’t. Yet, a literal handful of people who support book bans have somehow succeeded in banning hundreds of books and are now setting a precedent for statewide book bans.