The level of censorship in the United States remains at an alarmingly unacceptable level, as PEN America’s recently released banned-books report reveals. We at the Freedom From Religion Foundation are deeply familiar with the awful history of censorship — and the recent trendline is profoundly troubling.

“The group dedicated to free expression counted 6,870 bans during the past academic year,” states a National Public Radio story. “While that’s down from a total of 10,046 bans imposed during the 2023-24 school year, it’s still a sharp rise from the period of 2021-2023, which averaged just under 3,000 incidents of book banning each year, in what it calls a ‘disturbing normalization of censorship’ in public schools.”

“Never before in the life of any living American have so many books been systematically removed from school libraries across the country,” the PEN report says. “Never before have so many states passed laws or regulations to facilitate the banning of books, including bans on specific titles statewide.”

The usual suspects lead the list, with Florida, Texas and Tennessee topping this tally. And this year, they’ve been joined by a copycat, as the report points out.

“In 2025, a new vector of book banning pressure has appeared — the federal government,” according to the report. “Since returning to office, the Trump administration has mimicked rhetoric about ‘parents’ rights,’ which, in Florida and other states, has largely been used to advance book bans and censorship of schools, against the wishes of many parents, students, families, and educators.”

Much of the effort, motivated in good part by religion-based prudery, has centered around works that deal with LGBTQ-plus and gender identity issues. Even picture books have been deemed sexually explicit just for including such themes. The report reveals that national conservative organizations coerce or collude with local school officials to get such books banned.

The book-banning is so broad that the titles caught up in the dragnet have sometimes attained stellar reputations. On top of the PEN list are such beloved creations as “A Clockwork Orange” and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” And none other than Stephen King is the most banned author.

“There’s a paradox at the heart of contemporary book bans: Americans of all ages are reading fewer books and spending less time engaged in reading for pleasure than they did in past decades,” Andi Zeisler astutely writes for Salon. “It feels as though the organized pressure on school boards and elected officials is a kind of censorious Hail Mary, one last, sustained push to control the physical symbols of a world that has otherwise evolved past the need for pious, moralistic guidance on what young people should open their hearts and minds to.”

Zeisler discloses the unintentional service such efforts are providing to the targeted authors.

“A recent study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and George Mason University looked at more than 1,500 titles that appeared on lists of frequently challenged books between 2021 and 2022, looking for patterns in how removal from school libraries impacted them,” she writes. “Many of the results reflect exactly what you might expect, particularly from teens: the circulation of banned books increased 12 percent, on average, when compared to nonbanned books with similar focus and content.”

However, the negative repercussions for writers most often far outweigh such ironic benefits.

“Authors face the ‘Scarlet Letter’ effect: Having one of their books banned can become justification to challenge or ban their entire body of work,” writes Tabitha Dell’Angelo, an educator and former school board member. “School visits are canceled; future publishing contracts may be jeopardized; creativity is stifled by fear of backlash. The chilling effect spreads.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation has been a consistent advocate for freedom of thought. And there’s no true freedom of thought, conscience or even religion, unless our government and its public schools and libraries are free from religion and its control over thought. We are living in fraught times — and need to do all that we can to assert ourselves against such a pernicious phenomenon.

The very notion of “banned books” is anathema to a free society.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 42,000 members across the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

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