The Trump Department of Education has dismissed 11 complaints against so-called book bans, torching the Biden administration’s fight to block school libraries from removing titles, including those raising alarms about sexually explicit content.
After reviewing the complaints, attorneys with the department’s Office for Civil Rights found that “books are not being ’banned,’” but rather that school districts have implemented “commonsense processes by which to evaluate and remove age-inappropriate materials.”
“The complaints alleged that local school districts’ removal of age-inappropriate, sexually explicit or obscene materials from their school libraries created a hostile environment for students — a meritless claim premised upon a dubious legal theory,” the department said Friday.
The office also rescinded the guidance issued under President Biden warning school districts that eliminating certain books from their libraries may constitute a federal civil rights violation.
“Effective Jan. 24, 2025, OCR has rescinded all department guidance issued under the theory that a school district’s removal of age-inappropriate books from its libraries may violate civil rights laws,” the department said.
In addition, “OCR is also dismissing six additional pending allegations of book banning and will no longer employ a ’book ban coordinator’ to investigate local school districts and parents working to protect students from obscene content.”
The announcement heralded an about-face of the department’s stance on access to books in public schools, which have found themselves caught in a politically charged tug-of-war over risque materials, many of them with LGBTQ themes and characters.
The books facing the most complaints nationwide are “Gender Queer,” a graphic novel about a girl who wants to be a boy that includes masturbation and oral sex; and “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” which has an anal-sex scene.
Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said the department is “beginning the process of restoring the fundamental rights of parents to direct their children’s education.”
“Parents and school boards have broad discretion to fulfill that important responsibility,” he said. “These decisions will no longer be second-guessed by the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education.”
A Senate hearing on Linda McMahon, President Trump’s nominee for education secretary, has not been scheduled.
Condemning the move was PEN America, which said the department’s language is “alarming and dismissive of the students, educators, librarians and authors who have firsthand experiences of censorship happening within school libraries and classrooms.”
“For over three years we have countered rhetoric that book bans occurring in public schools are a ’hoax.’ They are absolutely not,” said Kasey Meehan, director of Freedom to Read at PEN America, in a statement.
On the other side was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who said “R.I.P. to the Book Ban Hoax.”
“The conflation of parents objecting to age-inappropriate, often sexually charged material being in their kids’ schools (even in elementary grades) with ’banning’ books was always a ridiculous narrative that the left, legacy media and the Biden administration manufactured and advanced,” Mr. DeSantis wrote on X.
Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo said on X that the Trump administration “understands that restricting pornography in elementary schools is not a ’book ban’ — it’s common sense.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.