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Last week, New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law prohibiting school boards from arbitrarily banning books based on their content, setting into place a process for dealing with potentially controversial works in school libraries.
Under the “Freedom to Read Act,” the state Commissioner of Education and State Librarian are tasked with creating “model policies” that will serve as an example of how library materials are curated or removed, and how any challenges will be evaluated.
The law requires local school boards and governing bodies of public libraries to establish their own individual policies — preferably based on the model policies — for curating and removing library materials, including a process for determining whether a challenged book may remain in the library’s collection.
Under the legislation, parents and other “interested parties” may still request that a book or other material be removed from a school library.
Additionally, both school and library boards may choose to ban (after a review) materials deemed “developmentally appropriate” or lacking literary, educational, or artistic value.
However, school boards and library boards are prohibited from arbitrarily or categorically excluding books from their library collections because of the origin, background, or views of the material or its authors. They are also disallowed from censoring library material based on personal disagreement with a viewpoint, idea, or concept, or because some individuals may find certain content “offensive.”
In recent years, some LGBTQ-themed books or books by LGBTQ authors have been banned in some states or school districts because some people believe that the inclusion of any LGBTQ content or characters in a literary work, even tangentially, makes it “sexually explicit.”
Under the New Jersey law — which will be implemented in December 2025 — the LGBTQ-themed book would have to be evaluated based on its merits and deemed “age-inappropriate” or “sexually explicit” to be removed from shelves.
In public libraries, certain materials could be moved from a youth section to an adult section but would first have to be challenged and go through the established review process.
The Freedom to Read Act also provides protections for library staff members, granting them legal immunity from civil and criminal charges arising from any book challenges.
Murphy signed the bill at a ceremony in the children’s section of the Princeton Public Library.
He cast the bill as a measure that will “strengthen, not diminish, the rights of parents to choose which materials their children should or should not have access to by ensuring that every family can make their own determination about what books are appropriate for a child,” adding, “our goal is to encourage parents to be active parents in every step of their child’s education and intellectual development.”
Murphy added that New Jersey is “the antithesis of all these book-banning states that you see. I’m incredibly proud to have signed it, but also acknowledge that America — and this is yet another good example — is becoming a patchwork quilt country. It really matters where you live.”
State Sen. Andrew Zwicker (D-South Brunswick), a sponsor of the bill, told NJ.com “it is not a coincidence” that books highlighting race, racial diversity, racism, and LGBTQ themes are those most heavily targeted by book-banning efforts.
“These bans are a deliberate effort to erase voices and perspectives that challenge the status quo, often under the guise of protecting children from discomfort,” Zwicker said. “[This bill] affirms a simple but powerful principle: You have the freedom to choose what you want to read. Parents have the right to decide what their children reads. But no one in New Jersey will be allowed to make that choice for you.”
Martha Hickson, a retired librarian who worked at the North Hunterdon-Voorhees Regional High School, spoke favorably of the immunity provision for librarians at the bill signing, pointing out that she had been targeted for fighting against efforts to ban books.
Hickson, the New Jersey Library Association’s 2023 Librarian of the Year, found herself attacked by parents and conservatives after objecting to the removal of five award-winning books with LGBTQ themes from the school library.
“I received hate mail, shunning by colleagues, antagonism by administrators, and calls for my firing and arrest,” she said during her remarks. She noted that parents at a school board meeting called her “a pedophile, pornographer, and groomer of children.”
She noted that LGBTQ students are harmed when books with characters who share their identities are called “disgusting, obscene, and depraved.”
“Students recognized that those insults were also intended for them,” Hickson said. “All of this has created a nationwide climate of fear.”
This post was originally published on here
