BOSTON — When Andrea Fiorillo became co-chair of the Massachusetts Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibilities Committee in 2019, she remembers there being fewer than 10 challenges to library materials in Massachusetts.
By 2025, there were 229 challenged titles. Fiorillo, who is also a member of the Mass Freedom to Read Coalition, noted a change around 2021, “when reports started to come in of Massachusetts libraries receiving entire lists of books to be banned, with a pattern emerging of challenges to books by and about LGBTQ people and people of color.”
“Queer-themed books started to disappear from our shelves. Multiple weaponized freedom of information requests came in. The police started to send police detail to our pride story times because the threat levels were so high. Staff were harassed by phone, in person and on social media,” she recalled of her library in the town of Reading. “In 2024, we received a bomb threat and a death threat during a children’s story time.”
Fiorillo stood at a podium at Franklin Public Library — the nation’s first public library — on Aug. 10 to support Gov. Maura Healey’s signature on a bill (S 3241) establishing a process for how library materials are able to be challenged and removed in Massachusetts, and laying out criteria for school library teachers to use when determining material appropriateness.
Materials can only be removed from a library after a vote by the local school committee or charter school board of trustees following a notice, public hearing and finding by a school personnel review committee “that the material, taken as a whole, based on clear and convincing evidence, is devoid of any educational, literary, artistic, personal or social value or is not age appropriate.” Only school employees, parents or guardians or students enrolled in the school can lodge challenges. Students, parents and guardians are able to appeal a decision to remove materials from the library to court.
The criteria for school library teachers to use when determining whether materials are appropriate for a library include whether it is age appropriate, serves an educational purpose, and is “based on the teacher’s or employee’s professional training and not on personal, political or doctrinal view.”
According to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, there were 4,235 different titles challenged in 2025, second to 2023 when there were 4,240 challenges. ALA noted that not all book challenges are reported and that its data “represents only a snapshot of book censorship throughout the year.”
The Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners said earlier this year that formal challenges to library materials, programs and services have increased by 50% since fiscal 2023, and that public libraries (not including school libraries) in 2025 reported 33 formal challenges — representing more than seven years combined. The board said that 86 libraries reported 309 informal challenges to materials, services and programs.
“In this moment, when education and free thinking are under attack, it’s really important that there’s leadership coming from the states, and that’s what today is about,” Healey said Monday right before signing the bill. “We want every young person to be able to have the chance to read freely, to think critically and to develop their own understanding of the world — which also may include, from time to time, reading and learning about things that they may disagree with.”
Senate bill sponsor Sen. Julian Cyr said Massachusetts isn’t immune from national trends.
“What has struck me most throughout this process has not been the books. It’s been the people. We heard from librarians who’ve been threatened, harassed, doxed and driven from their jobs,” Cyr said. “I met a librarian in my own district in Chatham who received death threats because of a children’s story time. I invited her to the State House to tell her story. She declined — not because her story wasn’t important, but because she was afraid.”
The law ensures that school library employees cannot lose their license or professional certification or be “dismissed, disciplined, placed on probation, involuntarily transferred, be otherwise subjected to an adverse employment action, fined or imprisoned for the selection of library materials when the selection is made in good faith and in accordance with the policy established.”
School districts, charter schools and local education agencies must create a written policy for their school libraries for how materials are selected, how library materials and facilities are used, and how to respond to challenges requesting to remove or restrict the materials. The policy must be aligned with American Library Association standards and be posted on the website of the school district, charter school or local education agency. Challenged materials must remain on the shelves of the school library pending a vote of the school committee or the board of trustees of a charter school made during the outlined process.
The districts, schools and agencies also have to file an annual report with the Department of Secondary and Elementary Education with information about complaints and challenges related to removing materials. The law requires a similar report be filed by the Board of Library Commissioners.
The House enacted the legislation on July 31 on a 152-1 vote, and the Senate enacted it on a voice vote that same day.
Carver Republican Rep. John Gaskey cast the one vote against sending the bill to Healey’s desk. He spoke in June on the floor about a rejected amendment, saying that “the ideological activists have decided to attack local school boards for simply daring to protect children from state-sponsored pornography.”
Education Secretary Stephen Zrike, Sens. Rebecca Rausch, Jacob Oliveira and Julian Cyr, and Reps. John Moran, Jeff Roy, Adam Scanlon, Sean Garballey and Aaron Saunders were among advocates and others at the bill signing.