Texas leads the U.S. in school book bans
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School districts in Texas imposed almost 8,200 book bans in the 2025-26 school year, per a PEN America report.
Why it matters: Book bans highlight the expanding influence of state politics on schools and how subjective the guardrails can be.
The big picture: Nearly 12,000 books were banned across the U.S. last year — the highest number of recorded bans in a single year since PEN America began tracking bans in 2021. Last year's report cited 6,870 banned books.
- Texas surpassed Florida for the first time in three years, with 8,193 bans compared with Florida's 3,212.
Catch up quick: The report cites Texas' Senate Bill 13, a 2025 law regulating how public schools catalog books and redefining how the public can challenge library materials in schools.
- The bill's supporters said books made available to students should be "appropriate" and in line with community values, keeping sexually explicit content out of schools.
- The legislation's critics say the law is too broad and accuse it of driving censorship in schools.
- "Texas students deserve access to books that reflect their own lives, teach them about others' lives, and inspire them to lead," the Texas State Teachers Association said.
State of books: The majority of books pulled from school libraries nationally last year fell into the young adult fiction and manga (comic books and graphic novels) categories, per the report. Around 90% of the titles were fiction.
- The banned titles include "Looking for Alaska," "Jane Eyre" and "Lessons in Chemistry."
The intrigue: Public records shared with PEN America show districts are increasingly using generative AI to decide which books should be banned.
- "These records show that generative AI/generative AI chatbots repeatedly recommend removing books, not because those books are obscene under the prevailing legal standard, but instead because other districts have banned them," the report says.
Zoom out: A 2025 report found that Texas' fourth and eighth graders rank lower on reading scores than the U.S. average.
- The Texas Education Agency earlier this year said middle schoolers' reading scores generally improved from last year, attributing the gains to the ban on cellphone use in schools.