The Department of Education on Friday ended federal efforts to reign in an epidemic of book-banning in local school districts by right-wing groups.

The announcement was made in dismissive, partisan and MAGA-inflected language in a press release titled “U.S. Department of Education Ends Biden’s Book Ban Hoax.”

“By dismissing these complaints and eliminating the position and authorities of a so-called ‘book ban coordinator,’ the department is beginning the process of restoring the fundamental rights of parents to direct their children’s education,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor. “These decisions will no longer be second-guessed by the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education.” 

The department announced that it had dismissed 11 book ban complaints and six pending complaints.

The Biden administration appointed a book ban coordinator to the department’s Office of Civil Rights in 2023 to counter the efforts of groups like Moms for Liberty, which targets books featuring LGBTQ+ topics and characters and those addressing race and racism. The groups, amplified online by accounts including LibsofTikTok, have characterized the targeted texts as “obscene” and “racially divisive,” language echoed in the DOE’s announcement.

PEN America, which has documented nearly 16,000 book bans in public schools nationwide since 2021, called the DOE’s actions “alarming.”

“For over three years we have countered rhetoric that book bans occurring in public schools are a ‘hoax.’ They are absolutely not,” said Kasey Meehan, director of Freedom to Read at PEN America. “This kind of language from the U.S. Department of Education is alarming and dismissive of the students, educators, librarians, and authors who have firsthand experiences of censorship happening within school libraries and classrooms.”f

The DOE said it had initiated a review of the Office of Civil Rights’ actions and found them to be meritless claims “premised upon a dubious legal theory” that book bans violated students’ civil rights.

“Attorneys quickly confirmed that books are not being ‘banned,’ but that school districts, in consultation with parents and community stakeholders, have established commonsense processes by which to evaluate and remove age-inappropriate materials,” the department claimed.

Book bans have roiled local school boards and districts over the last several years with the rise of groups including Moms for Liberty, which publishes lists of “objectionable” texts then targeted by local chapters.

After passage of an updated and draconian book ban by the Tennessee Legislature in July, a single school district in the state removed over 400 booksfrom school libraries deeming them “appealing to the prurient interest.” 

Those included The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Umbrella Academy comic book series by Gerard Way, Wacky Wednesday by Dr. Seuss, and Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes, which is the most frequently banned book of the 2023-2024 school year, according to PEN America’s latest report.

The book bans sweeping the country have largely targeted books by and about people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community, with conservatives attempting to paint titles as “pornographic.” According to a recent report from the Tennessee Equality Project, seven out of nine of the most challenged books in the state have queer themes or were written by an LGBTQ+ author.