America’s most extreme book ban might be coming to MD’s Eastern Shore

Picture a 14-year-old in Somerset County walking into her school library this fall, looking for a book that feels like it was written for someone like her — a kid figuring out who she is. Under a policy her school board is seeking to enact, that book won’t be on the shelf, no matter what its title or pedigree as a coming-of-age classic.

Not this year. Not even when she’s a 17-year-old senior, weeks from graduation.

That’s because the Somerset School Board, on Maryland’s Lower Eastern Shore, is pursuing a policy that, as drafted, would move all “young adult” books – that is, books classified by publishers and librarians as written for 12- to 18-year-olds – onto restricted, “adults only” shelves. The board somehow believes this entire genre of books read by children growing up across America is too adult, too mature, too controversial for Somerset students. It would forbid all but a few Somerset students over 18 from browsing (or, perish-the-thought, reading) books on the newly restricted shelves.

And to ensure that, the policy would punish any librarian who allowed under-18 students to see the forbidden books.

What books would be restricted?

By its terms, the policy would restrict treasured classics that young people have come of age reading for generations: To Kill a Mockingbird; The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank; A Wrinkle in Time; The Outsiders; Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry; Little Women. All verboten.

A Fault in Our Stars or the Hunger Games?Heavens, no.

The all-white Somerset board that took office in 2025 (governing a school system that is two-thirds students of color) is fast becoming notorious for its authoritarian streak. During just its first month, the board fired its experienced lawyer and hired new, ideologically aligned counsel behind closed doors – actions determined by the Maryland Inspector General for Education to be unlawful. It then tried to fire the Black, incumbent school superintendent – a decision reversed by the state board as a violation of due process. Along the way, the board suspended in-person meetings, banned a parent from attending after he criticized board censorship, and called law enforcement on residents who pushed back. The fallout now includes an ACLU public-records lawsuit challenging the Board’s secrecy, and a separate federal civil rights suit from the banned parent.

The YA reclassification is this board’s second attempt to ban books it doesn’t like. Its still- unenforced 2025 policy already looms as a First Amendment threat by authorizing book removals on partisan, ideological and religious grounds. That policy demands the school system favor books board members judge will “instill hope” and “foster good decision-making” while rejecting those the board thinks might “convey a sense of futility,” encourage “anti-religion,” “victimhood,” “rebellion” or “lawlessness.”

That’s an unconstitutional viewpoint-discriminatory mandate spelled right out in the policy’s text.

Somerset’s proposed expansion – barring student access to an entire literary category –is so extreme we can find no other school system in Maryland – or indeed, anywhere in America – with anything like it. The closest comparison is a failed experiment in Indiana, where a local library attempted to individually scrutinize Young Adult books, screening out those officials deemed too “adult.” That enterprise cost the community hundreds of thousands of dollars and ended in complete repeal of the policy and the ouster of the officials who’d pushed it.

Fortunately, such ill-conceived book banning schemes are clearly against the law in Maryland.

In 2024, the General Assembly enacted the Freedom to Read Act, building on existing constitutional protections by enshrining in Maryland law our state’s deep commitment to protecting students’ rights to grow to adulthood reading freely in school libraries.  It requires professional librarians — not board members — to maintain library collections “for the use of all students,” and expressly prohibits retaliation against librarians for doing that job.  It also requires any challenged book to stay on the shelf, fully available, until a proper review is complete. That review must be conducted book by book, by a committee of educators, parents, and students who read the entire book and hear all sides.

By its terms, Somerset’s YA proposal seeks to sidestep all that, by empowering a board majority to remove whole shelves of books without reading a word. Perhaps the board thinks that’s clever. But legal?  It is not.

Whether you call the Somerset proposal a “book ban,” as we do, or use the board’s euphemistic sleight to cast it as mere cataloguing, a scheme to wall off all Young Adult books so they cannot be read by students the schools serve is not a policy any Marylander – or any court – should tolerate.

Maybe that’s why pushback from Somerset parents and educators, the ACLU, NAACP, state and local education associations, the Maryland Association of School Librarians and a contentious July 23 meeting led a board majority to table a vote on the proposal until its next meeting.

That 14-year-old is still waiting to find out whether Somerset County schools trust her to read. In August, we’ll get the board’s answer.

Deborah Jeon is the Legal Director for the ACLU of Maryland.