Utah Schools BAN 3 Books! What's REALLY Going On?!

Utah has kicked off 2026 by cementing its place as the reigning champion of Book bans in the United States. Three more titles have been added to the state’s ever-growing list of prohibited reading material for public school students, pushing the total to a staggering 22 and officially surpassing South Carolina’s previous record.

Utah Schools BAN 3 Books! What's REALLY Going On?!

The newly banned books include some pretty well-known titles: Gregory Maguire's "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West," Jodi Picoult's "Nineteen Minutes," and Stephen Chbosky's "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." That’s right, even a book that many consider a modern classic, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” isn’t safe in Utah schools anymore.

This escalation is largely thanks to Utah's House Bill 29 (HB 29), which was enacted back in 2024. I remember when this bill was making its way through the legislature; there was a lot of debate about what constitutes "sensitive material" and whether this was really the best way to handle things. Now, we're seeing the real-world impact.

HB 29 essentially allows parents to challenge books they consider inappropriate, and here's the kicker: if a book is deemed to contain "objective sensitive material" or "pornographic" content according to Utah's definitions, and it's removed from at least three public school districts or two public school districts and five charter schools, then it's *gone* from *all* public schools statewide. Talk about a domino effect.

The law has a retroactive component, too. So books that met the state’s criteria *before* HB 29 even went into effect could still be swept up in the ban. It's a bit like rewriting history, or at least, rewriting the school library's shelves.

The process is pretty straightforward, and frankly, pretty scary. Schools that remove a book flagged as "sensitive" have to notify the State Board of Education. Once a book hits that removal threshold, every school in the state gets the memo and is expected to remove it. The current bans are a direct result of decisions made in Davis, Tooele, and Washington school districts. Just a handful of districts are effectively dictating what thousands of students across the entire state can read.

And don't think this is the end of the story. We're expecting more books to be added to the list as the school year progresses. What’s important to note is that individual school districts can also implement their own bans on top of the state-level restrictions. So, the reading landscape in Utah’s public schools is becoming increasingly restricted.

Of course, these laws don’t extend to private or homeschool institutions, so there’s that. But for students attending public schools, the options are shrinking. It really makes you wonder what books will be next, and what impact this will have on students' access to diverse perspectives and ideas. It’s a troubling trend, to say the least.