Missouri districts weigh returning banned books to school library shelves as court case moves forward

In November 2025, a Missouri court struck down a book-ban law that required local school libraries to remove hundreds of titles from their shelves. A Jackson County Circuit Court judge ruled the law “unconstitutionally vague and overbroad.” In the wake of the ruling, Missouri schools are now determining how to return these once-banned titles to students while the case moves toward the State Supreme Court.

“This is a tremendous win for educators’ and students’ rights to teach and learn,” ACLU of Missouri director of communications Tom Bastian says. “Not only did this law threaten jail and fines on library professionals and educators who are just trying to do their jobs in both public and private schools, but it also left other school personnel—and even parent volunteers—open to prosecution based on what they provide and discuss with their children at home.”

Passed by state lawmakers in 2022, the law expanded Missouri’s definition of pornography to include “any depiction or description of sexually explicit material” provided to a student. Given this widened definition, books that referenced or included sexual intercourse and genitalia were removed from libraries by many Missouri school districts, including titles like All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, Maus by Art Spiegelman, and works by William Shakespeare.

The state appealed the lower court’s recent ruling to the Missouri Supreme Court. While the case is on appeal, the circuit court’s order granting a permanent injunction blocking the state from enforcing SB775 will stay in place until the appeal process is complete. Bastian says the ACLU of Missouri will continue to defend the lower court’s decision on appeal. “In addition to the litigation, our team will continue to monitor and fight any attempt to violate students’ First Amendment rights and the ability of Missouri’s educators to do their jobs without governmental interference,” he says.

School districts are now navigating what the ruling means in practice, with policies and timelines varying from district to district. The Francis Howell School District, for example, currently has 38 books under review. District officials say they are using existing policies to guide decisions about whether titles should be returned to school library collections, though the process remains ongoing as the legal case continues. “We are going to have our library media staff review the books and, in connection with the weeding procedures in Regulation 6310, determine if any would meet those criteria,” FHSD chief academic officer Glenn Hancock says. “Once that process is completed, we will update the Board of Education with the remaining books.”

The district’s policy evaluates books under review based on several criteria, including outdated titles, materials that are no longer relevant to the school curriculum, and books beyond the comprehension of the library’s users or more appropriate for younger students. If a title passes review, then it’s returned to school library shelves. “Consistent with our process, books that are retained are returned to the collection and available for checkout,” Hancock says.

Bastian says the ACLU of Missouri has long fought to protect students’ First Amendment rights to access ideas and information. He notes, however, that there has been a substantial increase in attempts to ban or remove books from shelves in recent years, extending well beyond Missouri’s borders. 

In 2024, the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom identified 821 attempts to censor library materials and services throughout the United States, citing challenges to 2,452 unique titles. Elected officials, school board members, and administrators account for 72 percent of the groups pushing for book bans. “A lot of the book removals in Missouri started through organized efforts on social media,” he says. “They primarily targeted books by and about people from BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities.” 

Twelve school districts in Missouri removed 315 books after the law’s passage in 2022, while the Wentzville School District removed 220 titles. Critics, including the ACLU of Missouri and Wentzville students, challenged the law on the grounds of discrimination and free speech. By December 2022, the district had returned 200 of these books to its library shelves.

While the case is on appeal, Bastian says Missouri schools should return books to the school or classroom libraries that were removed solely due to Senate Bill 775. He shared that the ACLU of Missouri envisions a fair and just state in which everyone has equal access to civil rights and liberties, and the government is accountable to and representative of all people. “That starts with ensuring that the next generation of people who will go on to become the leaders and scholars of our communities have access to relevant information and not just that which aligns with the beliefs of politicians in power.”