The Utah State Board of Education has ordered schools to remove 13 books, including works by Judy Blume, Rupi Kaur, Sarah J. Maas, Margaret Atwood and other authors, for content they deem to be pornographic or indecent under a new state law.
Free speech advocates say this the first statewide book ban as, traditionally, schools and libraries have decided which books are appropriate for children giving due consideration to their literary or artistic value, ABC News reported.
The edict issued Friday comes after the passage of a law requiring state education agencies and local school boards to prioritize “protecting children from the harmful effects of illicit pornography over other considerations,” The New York Times reported.
Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, signed the bill, H.B. 29, into law this past March. It requires all schools to remove a book if school officials from at least three school districts, or two school districts plus five charter schools, deem that a book constitutes “objective sensitive material.”
The first set of banned materials includes Judy Blume’s “Forever,” is a coming-of-age book that touches on sexuality, Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake,”a post-apocalyptic novel that has been frequently subjected to banning, and Rupi Kaur’s book of poetry, “Milk and Honey,” which is about “violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity,” ABC News reported.
“The Board is committed to following the law and the list will be updated if and when needed,” a spokesperson for the state Board of Education said in a statement to ABC News.
Many groups have spoken up against the banning of these books.
“Allowing just a handful of districts to make decisions for the whole state is anti-democratic, and we are concerned that implementation of the law will result in less diverse library shelves for all Utahns,” a program director for PEN America’s Freedom to Read initiative, Kasey Meehan, told ABC News.