As each new school year begins, so too does a new wave of efforts to censor school library books. This year, the efforts are increasingly driven by a website called Take Back the Classroom. This site makes misleading and unsupported claims to negatively characterize schools based on excerpts from books they may have in their library collections.

While the website is called Take Back the Classroom, it is focused exclusively on school libraries and not on classroom education. It is not about mandatory curricular material that students have to read. Instead, it is about library books, optional offerings that students would read only if they choose to do so. The site is run by one person, Karen England, a political operative who misrepresents the law, the books, and the research about libraries in an effort to intimidate school administrators into engaging in constitutionally-prohibited viewpoint discrimination.

Who is Behind Take Back the Classroom?

What becomes clear the more you explore the website is that it is not a good faith effort at “protecting our children’s education” or “to provide accurate information.” Rather it is a thinly-veiled attempt to suppress views and ideas its creator dislikes, such as frank discussions about homophobia and racism. So just who is behind Take Back the Classroom? 

The sole named proprietor of Take Back the Classroom is Karen England. England is also responsible for the websites Kitchen Table Activist and Capitol Resource Institute. She is not a professional educator. She is not a librarian. She is not an expert in literacy or administration. She is not a lawyer. She is not even personally acquainted with the educational outcomes of public schools, as she homeschooled her children.

England is, however, a member and former board member of the Council for National Policy (CNP). Anne Nelson, in her book-length exposé Shadow Network, explains how a key goal of CNP is to undermine libraries and schools. In other words, England is a political operative who held a leadership role in a group actively working to damage public education. England travels around the country, going to school board meetings and making public comments laced with discredited research, false legal claims, and cherry-picked book excerpts. 

England also founded the Nevada Family Alliance. As its executive director, she argued elementary school teachers should wear body cameras to ensure they don’t teach students about race or racism. 

You can read more about Karen England in this profile from KUNR and you can find additional details about her discriminatory anti-LGBTQ activism on GLAAD’s website. 

What Karen England’s anti-library campaign ignores is the damage caused to communities when libraries are under threat. Students reading books in their school libraries improves educational outcomes. School libraries are critically important to students’ learning, especially at a time when literacy rates and reading levels are declining. England’s efforts to convince people that library books are harmful and that education professionals cannot be trusted does real damage to schools and communities by harming students and impairing teachers, as found in study, after study, after study. 

Which Library Books are Targeted on the Site? 

Take Back The Classroom identifies 373 unique titles it claims should be censored. Of those, 14 were written for children, 254 were written for young adults, and 105 were written for an adult audience. 318 of the titles identified on the site are fiction and 55 are non-fiction. Most of the titles are identified as being in high school library collections, which help older teens understand complex social issues, prepare for college, and become well-informed voters. 

Some of the titles written for adult audiences are very unlikely to appear in school library collections. These titles appear to be included to provoke fear and outrage, such as Fifty Shades of Grey and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Tantric Sex. Other titles have high appeal to older teenagers, especially students preparing for the AP Literature and Composition exam, such as books by Toni Morrison, Richard Wright, Margaret Atwood, and Khaled Hosseini, and the poetry of Allen Ginsberg. 

How are the Books Targeted?

Take Back the Classroom applies one of two designations to the books it targets for censorship: “Red Flag Warning” or “Sexually Explicit.” Several titles are identified without any content warning. It seems the website’s creator is still searching for a rationale for why the books don’t belong in school libraries.

35 titles are marked with a Red Flag Warning. According to the site, 

“Books assigned this designation contain content that is very concerning, and that should be on the radar of every parent with school-aged children. Specifically, this warning indicates that the book contains and promotes progressive propaganda meant to indoctrinate our students. This may include themes relating to gender roles, sexuality, family structures, LGBTQ+ issues, and other topics designed to lure children into the progressive mindset from a very early age.”

This “Warning” is simply a way for Karen England to say that these books contain views she does not like, so no one should get to read them. The Red Flag designation urges parents to “take back classrooms” by ​restricting access to materials based on the particular views, ideas, or opinions expressed by their authors. If schools were to act on this “warning,” they would be engaging in viewpoint discrimination. Viewpoint discrimination is unconstitutional and against the law. It is not merely illegal to censor materials that some parents don’t agree with, it can be very costly, wasting tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars that could be spent on student services. Lawsuits over books removed in Escambia County, Florida’s public schools cost the County over $200,000. Another school district in Alaska had to pay $89,000 in settlement fees after taking books it didn’t like off of school library shelves. Censorship costs parents and communities.

The Red Flag Warning also mischaracterizes representation of the lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ individuals–or even the acknowledgement of their existence–as somehow harmful or objectionable. It asserts that the lives of some students and families should not be reflected in the library collection, suggesting by extension that those individuals are not welcome in the school library. 

Finally, this designation radically misuses the term “indoctrination.” Indoctrination does not occur when people have access to a broad spectrum of perspectives and information, or when they choose to read a book. Indoctrination occurs when people are denied the opportunity to learn about dissenting ideas and viewpoints. Indoctrination occurs when voices are silenced and ideas are forbidden from library shelves. Censorship is a tool for those seeking to engage in partisan indoctrination, not those seeking to educate. 

An example of a book that received a Red Flag Warning from Take Back the Classroom is Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan. This is the sole excerpt the site provides from that critically acclaimed and award-winning book: “In sixth grade, Cody, Joni, a lesbian fourth grader named Laura, and I formed our elementary school’s first gay-straight alliance. …Membership in the gay-straight alliance soon surpassed that of the football team (which isn’t to say there wasn’t overlap).” The site contends the book should be removed from all school libraries in the country based on this excerpt.

In addition to titles with Red Flag Warnings, there are 329 titles the site labels as “Sexually Explicit.” This designation is applied to novels, memoirs, books of poetry, and a handful of sex education titles and books about how bodies change during puberty. According to the site, 

“This term denotes content that is known in legal terms as ‘pervasively vulgar’. Parents should know that sexually explicit books contain text and/or graphics that are prevalent throughout the book. This may include written descriptions of sex acts and/or graphic depictions of same (illustrations, pictures, links to videos or websites, etc.). This label indicates that the inappropriate sexual content is pervasively present throughout the book, and not simply in one paragraph or one page.”

Among the material Take Back the Classroom considers to be “pervasively vulgar” is this excerpt from the graphic novel Graceling by Kristin Cashore: “Young girls who had disappeared from an Estillan village and reappeared weeks later in a Westeran whorehouse. A man held in a Nanderan dungeon as punishment for his brother’s thievery, for his brother was dead, and someone had to be punished.” For those unacquainted with it, Graceling is one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Best YA Books of All Time and a recipient of the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books prestigious Best Book of the Year Award. The site seemingly wants us to believe the mere use of the word “whorehouse” is “sexually explicit.” Or perhaps it considers the book “pervasively vulgar” for imploying it’s unethical to imprison an innocent man. This characterization is genuinely baffling, but that is par for the course for the site.

Each title in Take Back the Classroom links to a generic form that Karen England urges parents to use to challenge the book’s presence in school libraries. The form cites the Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico decision alongside a boilerplate objection, claiming that the title is “pervasively vulgar and educationally unsuitable for minors.” 

While the Supreme Court’s decision is invoked to provide legal heft to the book banning effort, Take Back the Classroom is misconstruing what the Justices said. In Pico, the Court was clear in its declaration that “local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’” The Court does say that books may be removed if they are “pervasively vulgar,” or “educationally unsuitable,” but those phrases lack legal teeth – They are vague and undefined, leaving us without a legal standard to apply. Other Supreme Court decisions have robustly and rigorously affirmed students’ First Amendment rights in schools (See, for example, Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District) and held that those rights extend to materials unless they lack literary, artistic, political, or scientific value (in Miller v. California and Ginsberg v. New York). The Supreme Court has made it very clear that Pico is not a rubber stamp to remove books from school libraries. Courts have, time and time again, affirmed this by forcing school libraries to return books to their shelves after ideological groups like Take Back the Classroom demanded their removal. It is against the law for schools to allow a few people with a political or religious agenda to dictate what every child gets to read.

Some titles identified on the Take Back the Classroom website don’t include anything other than a “Red Flag” or “Sexually Explicit” content designation. That these books are somehow objectionable must be taken on faith, such as this “Red Flag Warning” for Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell:

Why You Should Reject R.E.M.O.V.E. Reports

For some titles, Take Back the Classroom provides a “R.E.M.O.V.E. Report,” a catalog of excerpts the site claims demonstrate the book is “explicit and pervasively vulgar,” “sexually inappropriate,” and “educationally unsuitable for minor children.” No book identified on the website has ever been determined by a court of law to meet a legal standard that could be used to justify removal from a school library collection, such as being “harmful to minors” or “obscene.” The Supreme Court has said time and time again that a book must be evaluated as a whole and not judged based on excerpts.

The R.E.M.O.V.E. Report for All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson demonstrates how misleading Take Back the Classroom’s allegations are. The Report calls Johnson’s award-winning memoir “sexually explicit” due to excerpts such as: “Page 6: I believe that the dominant society establishes an idea of what ‘normal’ is simply to suppress differences, which means that any of us who fall outside of their ‘normal’ will eventually be oppressed.” Here’s a full page from that same report with additional “sexually explicit” passages from the book:

Those familiar with All Boys Aren’t Blue know this memoir includes depictions of sexual assault and the author’s struggle to overcome the resultant trauma. The R.E.M.O.V.E. Report actually includes a passage from the book’s preface that provides both warning and context for that subject matter as another example of so-called “sexually explicit” content: 

“Page vii: This book will touch on sexual assault (including molestation), loss of virginity, homophobia, racism, and anti-Blackness. These discussions at times may be a bit graphic, but nonetheless they are experiences that many reading this book will encounter or have already encountered. And I want those readers to be seen and heard in these pages.”

Since page after page of the Report (the significant majority of it) focuses on passages highlighting the social harms of homophobia and racism, it is evident that these are the ideas the site actually objects to. Allegations that the books it targets are “sexually explicit” and “pervasively vulgar” are a smokescreen in a ploy to suppress ideas it disfavors.

(Please note that this post provides legal information but does not constitute a legal opinion. It should not be treated as legal advice. Please consult with your own legal counsel for legal advice regarding your particular situation.)

Eric Stroshane is the Assitant Director for Member Services of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. Sarah Lamdan is the Deputy Director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.