How to ban a book

There are currently 37 books banned in the state of Utah, and even more banned at the school district levels.

• • • A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

    • A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas

    • A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas

    • A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas

    • What Girls Are Made Of by Elana K. Arnold

    • A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas

    • Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

    • Forever by Judy Blume

    • Tilt by Ellen Hopkins

    • Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

    • Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

    • Blankets by Craig Thompson

    • Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas

    • Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott

    • Damsel by Elana K. Arnold

    • Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian

    • Tricks by Ellen Hopkins

    • Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

    • Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

    • Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

    • Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

    • The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

    • Bag of Bones by Stephen King

    • Breathless by Jennifer Niven

    • The Carnival at Bray by Jessie Ann Foley

    • The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel by Margaret Atwood

    • Red Hood by Elana K. Arnold

    • Looking for Alaska by John Green

    • Life is Funny by E. R. Frank

    • The Haters by Jesse Andrews

    • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

    • People Kill People by Ellen Hopkins

    • A Stolen Life: A Memoir by Jaycee Dugard

    • A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin

    • Lucky by Alice Sebold

    • Different Seasons by Stephen King

    • Push by Sapphire

Here’s a rundown of the book-banning process and what you can do about it

All books are first challenged at the district level. For the sake of a specific example, we’ll look at Davis School District’s policy, but other districts are assumed to have a similar policy in place. 

Any person with standing in the school district--students, guardians, or district employees (including school board members)--can challenge a book. The book is then immediately removed from school library shelves and classroom curriculum until the challenge is completed. Challenges are filed through the district website, where the person fills out a form that includes their reasons for wanting to ban the book--pointing to how the book violates Utah’s Sensitive Materials law (HB29). This reasoning must reflect the person’s own words and opinions and cannot include external links.

Once a challenge is filed, community members have 10 days from when the district posts the challenge to its website to submit comments (the form for comments for Davis School District can be found here).  These comments will be taken into consideration as the district moves forward with their review process. It is important to note that the district does not post time stamps on their website, so the best way to stay updated is to frequently check their website (Davis School District’s sensitive instructional materials website can be found here). Even If a community member misses the 10 day mark, they can still email a school board member with their support for the book while the challenge is under review.

After the district receives the challenge, the Teaching and Learning Department does a plausibility review--basically checking does the book exist, is it found in school libraries, and does the challenge make sense.

After that, the book is sent to the objective committee, which includes 7 voting members and is made up of a non-voting facilitator, a district administrator, a licensed teacher in English/language arts, a librarian, and 4 parents. It’s important to note that there are more parents in the committee than trained professionals. They look at the highlighted excerpts from the challenge, see if there is objective sensitive material, and vote to either keep or remove the book from schools. Although their policy requires them to state the rationale for removing a book, they are currently not providing any explanation for their decision beyond simply stating that the book contains depictions or descriptions that violate the Sensitive Materials Law. 

If they vote to keep the book, it then goes to the subjective review committee, which includes 8 voting members and consists of a non-voting facilitator, at least 1 educator/administrator, a licensed teacher in English/language arts, a librarian, and 4 parents. They will further review the book by performing an actual Miller test and reading the book in its entirety to determine that it does not contain objective sensitive material, and that it does have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors. This is supposed to be done in 60 days, but often takes longer. The committee will then vote to either keep or remove the book from schools. These committee notes for Davis School District are shared in the district database of banned books on the sensitive materials website, and can be found by clicking on the book title. If they vote to remove the book, the book is then banned and must be permanently removed from all schools in the district.

It’s important to note that the district slow-walks this process--whether intentional or not-- making it so that even if a book ultimately is not banned, students still lose access to it for a significant period of time.

The good thing is that a book challenge can be appealed at any time during this process. Any person with standing--a student, guardian, or district employee--can fill out a form on the district website listing the book they want to appeal and the reasons why the book has serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors (the appeal form for Davis School District can be found here). They can also show why the challenge doesn’t follow the district policy as a reason for it to be appealed. Our chapter Let Davis Read has excellent resources for appealing book challenges on their website.

Once a book is banned at the district level, and after a book is banned in 3 school districts (or 2 districts and 5 charter schools), it is then brought up to be banned statewide. It gets put on a Utah School Board of Education database, and the state library media specialist sends out a notice to all schools to remove them from their shelves. While the policy codified in HB29 states that once banned books reach the state level there is a 60 day period in which the book will be brought to a vote by the state board of education, a school board rule change made in 2024 now only requires a 30 day period in which a school board member may bring the book to a vote, no longer requiring a vote to ban a book statewide. To our knowledge, no book has ever been brought to a vote, and there is no standard of review the USBE is required to follow. 

Here are some good sources for more information 

PEN America’s Statement on HB29

This article was posted in August 2024, a few months after HB29 was signed into law and right when the Utah School Board of Education released the first wave of statewide banned books. This article gives a good rundown of HB29, how it’s affecting students, and the type of content it’s targeting.

The Salt Lake Tribune has a great Banned Books Database (updated as of Oct. 2023).

KUER with a great investigative report on the source of most of these book bans

This article takes a look at the statewide banned books, and the shortlist, to determine where the majority of these book bans are coming from. Davis and Washington school districts take the lead, accounting for 78.5% of all banned book reports as of December 2024. 

The Salt Lake Tribune with an article on the 2025 audit

This article goes over the state audit of books found in schools, flagging 22 titles for potential ban. The article also goes over where the auditors got the list of titles, coming from a legislature who sourced the titles from ratedbooks.org

KUER with the initial USBE interpretation of the objective sensitive material law

In Jan. 2025, the USBE interpretation of the objective sensitive material law briefly prohibited students from bringing their own personal copies of banned books onto campus. That interpretation was then reversed in July 2025, which KUER also reported on. 

School district’s book bans may have flouted state law. An inside look at investigative work our team did which led to discovering that Washington school district has no formal process for banning books which violates state policy. 

An investigative article by the Salt Lake Tribune on what happens inside the schools when a book is banned.

The Salt Lake Tribune investigated a school library data breach that occurred when one prominent book-banner volunteered at her school library. Read about it here.

After Stephen King’s book Different Seasons was banned statewide, he responded in a statement to the Salt Lake Tribune. Read it here.