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Two years after Tennessee lawmakers made it possible to ban books from school libraries statewide, not a single book challenge has been heard, let alone approved.
And no complaints are waiting to be considered, either.
Since early 2023, parents, students, and school employees have been able to challenge library content by submitting an online form to the Tennessee Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission.
But only three appeals have been filed with a commission that this year hired its first full-time staff at an annual cost of $500,000, in part to manage anticipated book appeals. All three appeals were withdrawn within a month.
“It’s been surprising,” said Commission Chair Linda Cash, about the lack of appeals before the state panel.
Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature passed Gov. Bill Lee’s school library law in 2022 to establish a local review process to make sure books and materials are “appropriate for the age and maturity levels” of the students who can access them.
A few months later, lawmakers approved a second measure creating an appeals system so that book complaints can go before the state’s existing textbook commission if the complainant isn’t satisfied with a decision by a local board or charter school. That law gave the commission unprecedented authority to ban certain books statewide, or to restrict them to certain grade levels in all Tennessee schools.
The school library legislation came after Tennessee emerged as one of the first states to restrict classroom discussions about race, gender, and bias. That the commission, two years in, has not considered any book ban complaints is evidence that school library debates are playing out locally instead of at the state level, with conservative parents getting mostly what they want.
Rep. Jerry Sexton, a Republican from Bean Station who co-sponsored the bill to create a book appeals process, said at the time that school libraries needed to be purged of content that he deemed as “pornographic” and “obscene.” His proposal also would have required schools to provide the commission with a list of books in their library collections.
When pressed on the House floor by Democratic Rep. John Ray Clemmons of Nashville about what the state should do with any banned books, Sexton said: “I would burn them.”
But Senate sponsors, who originally wanted the textbook commission simply to develop library guidance for schools, were more measured about approving any legislation that could ignite a wave of book removals. The Senate and House ultimately approved a compromise bill to establish the appeals process, without requiring schools to submit lists of their library books to the state.
“I think these appeals to the state will be rare,” Sen. Mike Bell, a Riceville Republican, said at the time. “I can’t imagine it being more than a handful – five a year, 10 a year.”
To help with the appeals process, the commission hired its first full-time staff — an executive director, staff attorney, and administrative assistant.
Cash, the chairperson who lobbied for state funding to staff up, said the administrative help was needed and overdue, regardless of whether the commission received book appeals.
The unpaid, all-volunteer, 13-member textbook panel still has its core responsibilities of approving state textbooks and instructional materials and establishing contracts with publishers to guarantee availability to schools at the lowest price. (The body just completed the latest textbook adoption cycle to align classroom materials with Tennessee’s science standards. The panel will look next at textbooks for career and technical education, then social studies.)
As also required under the 2022 law, the commission last year issued library guidance, not only for itself as the state’s appellate body, but for school districts and charter schools to follow to make the local review process more consistent.
Cash, who is also the chief of Bradley County Schools, never expected the commission to receive a flood of library book appeals. But she anticipated the state panel would have acted on at least some after two years.
Instead, book banning action escalated at the local level after lawmakers voted this spring to expand the governor’s “age-appropriate” library law to prohibit materials that offend conservative sensibilities, especially related to sexual content and LGBTQ issues. The law now includes a broad checklist of the kinds of content deemed unsuitable, including nudity, descriptions or depictions of sexual excitement, sexual conduct, and excess violence.
As a result, at least 1,100 books were removed locally during the first few months of the academic year, according to a statewide survey of members of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians. Hundreds more have been pulled since the survey was conducted. Leaders with the librarians group believe those numbers are conservative.
The vast majority of the removals were handled preemptively by school officials and librarians without going through local complaint processes that had been in place for years. Those processes generally allowed students, parents, or educators to flag their concern with a school librarian and eventually take unresolved matters to the local school board that took into consideration a recommendation by an ad hoc review committee of educators and parents.
“I think that’s unfortunate,” Cash said of some unilateral book removals under the stricter library law.
The commission’s library guidance, issued in 2023, called for local schools to adopt and follow a thoughtful process for receiving feedback about library materials.
“We have professional librarians who do an excellent job of looking at books and bringing concerns before committees of educators and parents to screen them,” Cash said.
On the other hand, Cash believes the library laws have made school officials and librarians more attentive to the concerns of parents and increased scrutiny of book collections for age-appropriateness.
“Parents want to be heard and listened to,” she said. “When we don’t do that, I think that’s when we begin to have issues.”
Former Sen. Jon Lundberg, who co-sponsored the bill that ultimately opened the door to statewide book bans, said he’s not surprised that the textbook commission has yet to hear its first challenge of a local library decision.
“It wasn’t that bad decisions were being made about library books,” said the Bristol Republican. “We just decided to establish a process, in case there ever was a need.”
Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.
