Utah Bans 14th Book from Public Schools | Salt Lake Tribune
Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott joins 13 other titles are banned from Utah’s public schools.

Texas State Board of Education Wants More Control Over Public School Library Books | Texas Tribune
A majority of the panel voted to call on the Texas Legislature to pass a state law giving members the authority to determine age-appropriate books for students.

South Carolina Requires Parent Permission for ‘Crank’ | SC Daily Gazette
High school students in South Carolina can continue to check out Crank by Ellen Hopkins, as long as their parents agree to it, a state committee decided. The committee also kept an English literature textbook that was challenged. It asked for more details about two other challenged novels, Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes and The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. The parent challenging the books bypassed her children’s district and went straight to the state.

Trump’s Promises to Conservatives Raise Fears of More Book Bans in U.S. | Los Angeles Times
The national furor in recent years around banning books on race and gender in public schools is intensifying as President-elect Donald Trump threatens to shut down the Department of Education, emboldening conservatives to end “wokeness” in classrooms.

Florida Again Argues Books Ban Are 'Government Speech,' Not Prohibited by First Amendment | tallahassee.com
In yet another legal case, Florida's government is arguing that book removals in public schools are "government speech," meaning they are unrestricted by the First Amendment. It's a controversial legal argument that free speech advocates have called "authoritarian," but one that the state has been particularly passionate about over the last year. It's unsettled case law, as the state attorney general's office admitted in the filing, but that means this and the other cases where the state has made the government speech argument have the potential to set a powerful precedent, perhaps forever altering First Amendment law and public bookshelf access.

The Unreading Room: Responding to Book Bans and America’s New Literacy | WLRN
Artist Dimitry Saïd Chamy has a question he wants to work out: What's next for literacy in America? He attempts to piece together answers in his exhibition, The Unreading Room, at Florida International University's Miami Beach Urban Studio. The Unreading Room is Chamy’s take on the suppression of free expression and literature, embracing his own love of reading and the current evolutions of book banning and media consumption.

Maryland District Officials Remove 5 More Books from Library Shelves | Baltimore Sun
Carroll County (MD) has now removed 26 titles this year.

Community Protests Ignite Heated Debate Over Book Bans at New Mexico District School Board Meeting | KRQE
Heated protests erupted outside an Albuquerque (NM) Public Schools board meeting Wednesday evening. Social media posts from a local church and from LGBTQ+ advocacy groups spurred more than a hundred members of the community to show up in protest and to support a North Carolina pastor who is known for advocating for the removal of what he calls “perverse” books in schools. 

Alabama County Public Library Moves Books Out of Children's Section | WAAY 31
Public libraries continue to limit content available to minors. This comes as the Huntsville-Madison (AL) County Public Library removed more books from its children's sections to comply with the Alabama Public Library Association’s policy to limit minors' exposure to potentially harmful books.