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    April 30, 2025 Civil Rights and Social Justice

    Experts discuss rise in book bans that disproportionally affect LGBTQ titles

    Panelists at an ABA webinar on librarian rights and censorship of books about the LGBTQ community agreed that lawyers could do more to help raise awareness about the issue.

    Stephen Wermiel, professor of practice in constitutional law at American University Washington College of Law, said there is a need to raise awareness because of misrepresentations in the book ban debate about the harms of exposure to LGBTQ-related materials.

    “I think educating people and using … lawyers in the communities to fight back and really to just disseminate accurate information to put out fires is a critical role,” Wermiel said.

    Nathan Bruemmer, former executive director of ALSO Youth in Sarasota, Florida, a community center focusing on outreach, education and advocacy for LGBTQ+ youth, said it is critical to address the damage that misinformation has on youth. He encouraged lawyers to, “really get behind the issues” to understand the cases and decisions that have a broader social context and their implications.

    Elly Brinkley, a legal fellow at PEN America, a free speech advocacy organization, said there are about 15 book-banning lawsuits across the country. Her organization, which publishes reports on book banning, has tracked 16,000 book bans across the country since 2021, and the number continues to rise, she said.

    Brinkley said lawyers could join grassroots efforts like PEN that have worked to fight book bans at the local, state and federal levels as well as through litigation and research.

    “Our research has been really instrumental in helping get the word out about this issue and understanding its scope,” she said, noting that a report released last fall found that more than half of books banned during the 2023-2024 school year were about people of color or the LGBTQ community

    “It just really breaks my heart to know that kids are not getting access to this information,” Brinkley said. “We need to think about not only do they have access to information, but what it does to someone to feel their identify is so, you know, so dangerous to some people that it creates all these issues.” It’s important for lawyers and adults in general to support children in their education, she said.

    Oral arguments were recently heard by the Supreme Court in Mahmoud v. Taylor. Parents are seeking to opt their children out of instruction using LGBTQ-inclusive books, arguing that it violates their First Amendment rights to freely exercise their religion. 

    Brinkley said the intent of the school district in the case was to provide a more inclusive curriculum and diversify the collection of books considering the people who live in the community. “There are queer kids in classes and queer families in their community so being exposed to them is a fact of life,” she said.

    Wermiel said lawyers could also support efforts like Banned Books Week by talking about it or sharing information with family, neighbors and the community. The week, sponsored by the American Library Association to raise awareness about frequently challenged books,is scheduled for Oct. 5-11 and.

    “It may not solve the problem, but the more people know about it and understand, the more hope we have,” Wermiel added.

    Illinois became the first state to outlaw book bans in 2023 by enacting the Public Act 103-0100 (formerly HB 2789). The law is designed to protect libraries’ freedom to acquire books and prevent them from being penalized if they don’t remove books.

    “Book banners are very loud and vocal, it’s like they’ve been shouting through a megaphone for many years and so I think hearing there is an alternative approach and another point of view, it’s critically important to know there are ways to deal with it and there is support for it,” Wermiel added.

    The webinar was moderated by Bobbi M. Bittker, civil rights attorney and chair of the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Committee of the Civil Rights and Social Justice Section. The program is part of the Rule of Law in America series.

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