‘We’re red here, just to let you know’: Minnesota school district allows national conservative group to decide which books students can read

After a disagreement with a local review committee, an Anoka County Minnesota school district decided to allow a national conservative group, BookLooks, to determine which books are permitted in its schools.

The situation in Anoka County is what the book-banning movement has been building up to. It has always been about giving a few people in the country the power to determine what everyone else reads. Studies have shown that the majority of Americans do not support book bans. Book ban meetings in Florida have been known to draw as little as one attendee, while just 11 people were responsible for 60% of all book challenges nationwide in 2021 – 2022. Yet, conservative politicians keep catering to this small minority, passing legislation to make it easier for a handful of people to pull books by the hundreds, or even thousands, in their school districts. In conservative states, school officials are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal battles concerning book bans without the support of their residents or are making decisions about banning books and redacting textbook chapters behind closed doors.

Conservatives have abused their power in places like Montgomery County, where they put together a “Citizens Review Committee” to bar educators and librarians from the process of reviewing challenged books. However, even a local review committee didn’t give conservatives the desired power in Anoka County, so they moved on to BookLooks.

Anoka County turns to Moms for Liberty book rating website

An Anoka County school district, St. Francis Area Schools, will now rely on a conservative book rating website with ties to Moms for Liberty to determine what its students are allowed to read. Under the website’s rating system, books like Night by Elie Wiesel, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, and Dear Evan Hansen would all be banned from St. Francis Area Schools. The fact that Night can no longer be purchased by St. Francis Area Schools under its no policy is especially concerning. Board Member Nathan Burr stated:

That is a true story of his time in Jewish prisoner camps. It has the exact same rating as some of the books that are being reviewed currently, with the same description of ‘inexplicit sexual conversation.’ Not pornography. … If we go with BookLooks, that book is taken away. That’s telling us that history that has happened to an individual is now not allowed in our district.

Meanwhile, St. Francis Area Schools opted to bypass its local review committee in favor of BookLooks over a disagreement regarding one book: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Conservative Board Members were enraged when the local committee decided to keep Me and Earl and the Dying Girl in school libraries. Board Member Amy Kelly openly confirmed that they wanted to cater to the district’s conservative book banners, stating, “We’re red here, just to let you know. We’re not going to always be on the same page, but I know we’re conservative. They don’t want this stuff in the libraries.”

Staff attorneys advised St. Francis Area Schools against switching to BookLooks, warning that doing so could violate the First Amendment and expose the school to legal action. Legal Counsel Maggie Wallner pointed out that the county is “supplanting the library media specialist’s professional judgment with an external rating system.” BookLooks is not run by professionals with library credentials. Instead, it was started by a former Moms for Liberty member. It is not an “objective” rating system, and St. Francis Area Schools’ reliance on it means it will exclude material based on a site’s political viewpoints. Burr pointed out that BookLooks goes directly against the school district’s “neutrality” and desire to keep political views out of the schools.

However, the majority of the school board decided that they knew better than the legal advisers on their own staff and voted to turn to BookLooks. Just as conservatives desired, a random conservative Moms for Liberty website is now being permitted to determine what an entire school district is allowed to read.