Book Censorship News, February 20, 2026

Horry County wasn’t–and isn’t–alone in this. Lancaster County, South Carolina, has also been dismantling young adult sections in its libraries. In a heated library board meeting last summer, one board member addressed the library director over her insistence that they remove books from the young adult collection and move them to the adult collection. That board member explained how young adult books are books for teenagers, not for adults, and that the naming convention has been that way for a long time (you can view the video of that part of the board meeting here). The director didn’t believe this to be the case, and neither did some of the board.

At the September County Council regular meeting–county council, not the library council–the board member who’d taken the time to explain what YA books are and are not was fired from her position on the library board.

She did, at least, get the opportunity to lay her expertise and research out in an email to the library director and board following the July meeting. The following comes from a Freedom of Information Act submitted to the county (email addresses have been blurred):

But even before her July explanation of YA literature or subsequent firing in September, YA books had already started disappearing into the adult collections.

Via a budget proviso passed years ago, some South Carolina public libraries have dismantled teen collections; others are actively working on it. The compliance mandate isn’t because there are inappropriate books in the collections. There is no such thing as porn for kids, and there is no obscene material available for teen readers, period. It would be against the law to publish, let alone purchase for a library. But provisions such as this one have encouraged libraries to become censors and remove any and everything that “could” “potentially” be an issue. It’s thrown actual expertise out the window, and it’s thrown advocacy for young people right along with it. Even as recently as this month, York County, South Carolina–whose library board has banned “gender identity” books from the library for anyone under 18 and has implemented the use of Rated Books for collection guidance–saw its GOP pass a proclamation that they were fighting against the American Library Association as the accrediting body for professional library workers.

It’s not just South Carolina. Wyoming legislators have on their docket this session a bill that would effectively dismantle YA sections in public libraries. It follows the same patterns seen in South Carolina. House Bill 10 would require that public and school libraries certify that collections accessible to those under the age of 18 do not contain “sexually explicit” materials. Libraries found in violation would face a fine for each violation, and anyone could launch a complaint against a library where they feel materials are out of compliance. “Sexually explicit” isn’t a legal designation but one dreamed up by the legislature. This bill would do precisely what’s been done with South Carolina’s proviso: encourage rampant censorship and removal of books from teen sections. Those books could be discarded entirely or, as in South Carolina public libraries, be moved into adult collections.

“What’s the big deal?” some may wonder, especially if the books themselves aren’t actually removed from the libraries. The answer is that many things are wrong here and it all illustrates the slippery slope of ceding our rights as citizens.

First, this is still censorship. It’s a relocation, meaning that books written and published for teenagers are now being pulled from teen collections and placed in adult collections. In some cases, libraries may also institute restrictions on these titles, requiring young people to have parental permission to access YA books now shelved in adult sections. That’s already happening in public libraries across Idaho, Tennessee, and, potentially soon, in Iowa.

Equally as big a deal is that the targeting of teen literature–most commonly referred to as young adult literature–coincides with continued decreases in services and spaces dedicated to and serving teenagers. Boatloads of digital and print ink have been spilled in recent years over young people being “different” post-COVID. About teenagers not having the ambition or curiosity they once did. Today’s teenagers are little more than anxious creatures who are constantly on their phones and not hanging out with one another. About how today’s teenagers don’t know how to read a book.

Rarely do these fear-mongering pieces pause to consider where or how teenagers are allowed to be teenagers anymore. There are not third spaces for teenagers in America. Teenagers are more and more commonly rendered as property rather than autonomous beings, whether it’s to their parents under the guise of “parental rights” or to the state, also under the guise of “parental rights.”

Malls are mostly off-limits to young people, if they’re accessible at all (and to be clear, malls aren’t actually third places–they’re places of expected consumerism, and young people don’t have expendable income the way they once may have). There aren’t teen centers in most communities, and in communities where they exist, many are faith-based. Park district programming for teenagers is limited. There are fewer and fewer entertainment options for teens, too–the teen movies that proliferated the lives of many of today’s 30-60 year olds don’t exist now, and the teen entertainment that does exist outside the home is expensive or complicated to access. A teen going to a coffee shop with their friends isn’t in a third place, either. They’re in a business that requires them to buy something to be there, and they’re in a business where it’s likely other patrons or staff will complain about them being loud or goofy. Being teenagers.

There are really only two true third places that exist for teens in America–spaces where they can exist as themselves with no expectation of money being exchanged. Those places are community parks (see above) and public libraries (…see above).

As public spaces for teenagers have winnowed, so too have the professional opportunities for people who enjoy working with adolescents and who have expertise and experience in doing so. Teen librarianship–who also go by the title of Young Adult librarian or Youth Services Librarian (usually differentiated from children’s librarians by serving the whole range of young people, birth to 18)–was once a growing area within librarianship. The Public Library Association’s annual survey of public libraries, though, shows that this arena of service has been shrinking. Where 2021 data showed that 81% of libraries had some teen library role, whether full or part-time, that number fell to 75% in 2025.

Where teen programming and services still exist in libraries, they’re being added to the workloads of already overstretched librarians. Today, right alongside the disappearance of young adult literature from library shelves is the disappearance of these professionals, too. Years of budget cuts in libraries have put their roles among the first to be cut or reworked, and the impact continues to be felt. The American Library Association’s Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)–a dedicated part of the professional organization to teen services–is also folding into the one dedicated to children’s services, further winnowing this area of expertise as robust and distinct from others, including services to younger children. The decision was in part due to a steep decline in YALSA membership, indicative of fewer teen librarians and fewer institutions with the funding to sustain their teen librarians’ professional association affiliation.

Teen librarians also report the steepest declines in job satisfaction, likely due to tighter budgets, increased scrutiny, and a lack of support for a demographic that requires more time, effort, and money than any institution is willing to provide. From a 2025 Liblime Satisfaction Report:

Notably, there has been a significant decline in satisfaction among those working with teens in public libraries. The most significant decrease was among those working with teens in public libraries, from 81% to 49% (1). This 32 percentage point drop represents one of the steepest declines in satisfaction within any library specialty area, potentially indicating unique stressors affecting youth services librarians.

That expertise in young adult services, which frequently coincided with an expertise in young adult literature, is itself becoming seen as unimportant. That’s precisely why an actual YA expert on the board of a public library was not only not given serious attention when explaining what young adult literature is, but she was also fired for daring to talk about something she actually knows about. Even the professional research and writing being done about teen services in public libraries has declined over the last 10 years.

None of this touches the realities of school librarianship. We know school library censorship has been astronomical since 2021. Part of that is because we have fewer school librarians in schools, too. Who is being seen as an expert in not only literacy, but also in adolescent development? In more schools than not, the answer is no one in the library. Fewer than 30% of US schools even employ a school librarian.

Book censorship has a generational impact, and teenagers know that their education, entertainment, and future opportunities are what’s under attack with book bans. So what’s at stake when a professional field of librarianship, with expertise and passion for teen services, collides with legislative priorities that yank away books and materials written and intended for teen audiences? A lack of opportunity and a continued hands-in-the-air attitude from adults who can’t figure out what’s wrong with teenagers and why teenagers never seem to get off their phones. Teenagers have nowhere else to go, and more and more, they find themselves with fewer safe places in their community with advocates who care about their current lives and the future being dismantled before them. And when teenagers do what legislators demand that they do–get a job–they’re finding those same legislators telling teenagers their labor isn’t worth minimum wage, either.

Legislating away YA areas of libraries is legislating away teen services. In conjunction with the constant budget cuts and threats leveraged against public libraries, this further cuts the spaces and places teens can be who they are, where they are. It’s the erasure of young people from society happening in parallel with the reveal of how many high-power people–and their political sycophants–have taken advantage of young people in their most vulnerable years. It’s further erasure of a demographic of people, who then experience a constant barrage of media about how lazy, entitled, and stupid their generation is, as if the system wasn’t designed to set them up for failure or dependence.

But those same teens are great political pawns, especially for those in the “parental rights” camp. Those teens are theirs to own and tell what to do. Those teens aren’t people. They’re property.

It becomes clearer and clearer not only when we see YA books being moved into children’s areas or adult areas. It’s also clear through state and local laws that have banned teens from entering adult collections in the public library–see Idaho Falls, Idaho, and the state’s HB 710, or Sumner County, Tennessee, and their policy. Those teenagers cannot borrow The Handmaid’s Tale or The Bluest Eye because those books are shelved in the adult collection, even though those same teenagers can legally drive themselves to the library and can be recruited by the armed services during their lunch hours without mom or dad’s permission.

Teenagers, in the eyes of such legislation and policy, are either children or adults, depending on who it benefits. They aren’t a psychologically, physiologically, culturally, or socially unique demographic with needs met by those with unique training, skills, passion, and empathy for meeting them exactly where they are. They don’t deserve their own collection of literature that explores the highs, lows, difficulties, joys, and unique experiences of this demographic.

Caring about the banning, relocation, restriction, and removal of books written for teenagers matters, but not just because it’s censorship. It matters because it’s representative of the not-so-slow chipping away at the rights and responsibilities teenagers have in America–and a not-so-slow chipping away at what we as adults owe young people as they grow up.

Again and again, it bears repeating: it is young people who are the most hurt during this ongoing period of book censorship, and more and more, it’s becoming evident that it’s not only people of color and queer people that legislators and the far right want to legislate out of existence. It’s teenagers, period.

As it stands, we’re leaving them a whole lot of empty promises and cruelty enacted by a handful of conspiracy-peddling, genital-obsessed, predatory adults.

Not to mention a whole lot of empty shelves.

Book Censorship News: February 20, 2026

• So speaking of the Wyoming bill that would decimate teen sections in libraries, it has passed its first hurdle in the legislature this week.
• Here’s the list of books being flagged for removal at Lapeer Community Schools (MI). You’ll be shocked to learn these books were found via Take Back the Classroom.
• Speaking of Michigan and Take Back The Classroom, here are the books that the out of state group thinks are inappropriate in Ann Arbor schools. 2026 is the year TBTC is really digging its claws into communities in Michigan, apparently.
• Iowa republicans are doing the most when it comes to attacking libraries this year. Another bill passing in the Iowa House: “Under the bill (HF 2309), kids and teens would need yearly parental consent to check out public library materials deemed “harmful to minors.” That would include books and other content depicting a wide range of sex acts that could be considered offensive, and that taken as a whole, lack “literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors.” Library workers —including volunteers — could be criminally charged for letting a minor have access to restricted content if they know the parent has not granted consent or if they try to circumvent consent requirements. Additionally, the bill allows parents to sue a library, a public library board of trustees or library employees who violate the restrictions within two years of an alleged violation.” This is intended to make accessing libraries difficult and cumbersome so that the average person will decide not to bother.
• Arizona wants to similarly punish librarians for not knowing what books will fall under the vague far-right target of “including anything that depicts “sexual conduct, sexual excitement or ultimate sexual acts”.” This would apply to public and school librarians. Check the quote from the legislature who blames today’s world on….Judy Blume.
• Elizabethtown School District (PA) students are being denied three contemporary novels as part of their English class studies because the board doesn’t like them. The district’s board has been overtaken by a far-right group, which you can learn more about in this documentary.
• After complaints about a novel being used in a French class, Palmyra Area School District (PA) will not be removing it from use.
• In what is one of the weirdest “articles” attempting to find out what Jackson Madison County Library (TN) will do about 50 book challenges, the decision is not to ban them but “some” may be relocated for “age appropriateness.” Moving a book from where it belongs to a place where it doesn’t–say, moving All Boys Aren’t Blue from the YA section to the adult or moving a picture book about pronouns to a “parenting” section–is still censorship. Since the books in this situation aren’t named, we don’t know yet what kind of censorship may prevail here.
• Speaking of censorship, that’s what Livingston Parish Library (LA) has done with This One Summer. After complaints, it was moved from the teen section to the adult section.
• Redlands Unified School District (CA) wants to put principals in charge of approving the library books for the district. Remember that California has an anti-book ban law, but it hasn’t deterred this district’s board from implementing plenty of bans and restrictions.
• Readington School District (NJ) has adapted a policy for the library that now makes librarians flag “sensitive materials” for review by administration. This flies in the face of the state’s anti-book ban bill, and it’s intended to turn librarians into book banners–and in this case, those librarians pointed all of this out, but the far-right members of the board did not care.
• The Massachusetts father who tried to opt his child out of a classroom lesson on gender stereotypes just learned he can’t do that, per the courts.
• Rutherford County Library Alliance (TN) is organizing pushback to the potential ban of nearly 200 books following demands from the Secretary of State. Here’s what you should know if you’re local (& if you’re not local, what you can borrow when this happens in your community).
• Anderson County Library (TN) heard from residents at its last board meeting about what to do about so-called “inappropriate” books available for children and teenagers. This is again related to the letter sent to almost every library in the state from the Secretary of State, who believes Trump Executive Orders are law of the land.
• Mohave County Supervisor Ron Gould (AZ) wants to make the decisions over the books allowed to be donated to the public library in the county.
• “After several years of passing laws banning “pornographic or indecent” books from Utah schools, legislative audits, and a growing statewide list of prohibited titles, lawmakers are continuing to sponsor more bills restricting content allowed in schools this year. However, the work to keep up with all the law changes has been arduous for state officials and schools — and some Republicans are opposing any additional rules, citing exhaustion.” All of the fixation on books in libraries does beg the question of what actual issues in Utah education have just been completely ignored because of conspiracy theories and the need some GOP have to continuously talk about sex.
• The New Hampshire GOP’s obsession with book banning is expanding with their proposed Senate Bill 434. “SB434 would radically expand what parents can formally challenge. It would not just be school library books, but virtually anything in a school: books, websites, artwork, plays, dances, statues, pamphlets, recordings, and even visiting speakers. The bill requires every district to establish a complaint process for “materials harmful to minors,” “age-inappropriate,” or “otherwise offensive” without ever clearly defining those terms.” Recall that their book ban bill last year was vetoed by the governor.
• Arkansas’s state library board is refusing to distribute state aid to libraries. Why? They don’t know their own audit rules and want more power to decide what libraries can and cannot do. This is going to harm smaller libraries pretty quickly. This state library board is all appointed by Governor Huckabee Sanders and reflects her interests, not the interests of the citizens or libraries.
• Florida House Republicans finally defined what “materials harmful to minors” means, which is important since they’re trying to get even more books banned in the state. It’s a useless definition, of course, wide open to interpretation and the will of whatever lawmaker feels like. It’s not normal how much time these republican lawmakers spend defining terms so they can talk about sex, gender, and genitals.
• Florida higher education students–that is, adults–are being given an intro to sociology textbook that has been redacted by state officials. Topics removed from the book include those on race and racism, social class, the impact of technology on people, and those on gender.
• All non-profit libraries–which differ from the vast majority of public libraries that are democratic entities–have to stop providing passport services. This is a huge blow to the patrons of these non-profit libraries, as often those non-profit libraries are operating in rural or small areas and they are likely one of the only places within a reasonable commute to get those passports.
• Pickens Public Library (SC) “is indefinitely cancelling many youth programs in order to allow library staff to review more than 80,000 books for themes or other content deemed inappropriate by the library board of trustees.”
• NPR’s Code Switch talks about where and how Mike Curato’s Flamer has gotten caught up in the book banning surge.
• Mason City Public Library (IA) will not be relocating Let’s Talk About It or Sex Is a Funny Word from their young adult section. This is how it should be.
• Jake Epp Library in Manitoba, Canada, will not be removing the book Queerfully and Wonderfully Made, which a patron challenged because of its title. No joke.
• Alabama is yet another step closer to making it easier for partisan politicians to fire library board members that don’t follow their directives.
• Last week’s roundup included a story from a man who wanted Oskaloosa Public Library (IA) defunded over some books he found offensive. We now know what those books are and they include….a picture book about babies. This is a perfect example of a man who has been brainwashed by the book banners.
• New Castle Public Library (PA) is dealing with some people who hate that the public library has LGBTQ+ books available. “One of the individuals most publicly against queer literature is Bill Messner, the head of the Constitution Party of Lawrence County. The board agreed to ban Messner for life from the library after he was originally suspended for three months, McCurdy said. Messner was escorted from the library by city police in November after taking pictures and filming a Facebook Live video showing queer reading materials in the youth services section.”
• Jackson County Library (NC), which voted to leave its regional system of libraries because other libraries in the system provided access to LGBTQ+ books, “unexpectedly” lost its director in January. It’s probably not unexpected.
• A positive update in the ongoing saga at Samuels Public Library (VA).