Bad-news fatigue is real for library advocates who feel like every year is more hostile than the one before it. Since about 2021, coordinated groups of parents and elected officials, with support from well-funded networks, have increasingly pushed to outsource librarians’ curatorial authority through parental consent policies and external review boards, all to exert greater control over what books are available on library shelves. It’s a lot to take in.
But in 2025, there were notable examples of voters, courts, and candidates across the country affirming the profession’s core values of intellectual freedom and inclusive access. Below we highlight five recent victories for libraries, library workers, and their communities.
1. California voters rein in city council overreach
Huntington Beach, California, has become a flashpoint in national conversations about partisan political encroachment in city governance. In 2023, its conservative city council passed a resolution restricting minors’ access to library materials containing so-called “sexual content” (a blanket term that intellectual freedom advocates assert also includes materials relating to the human body, puberty, and LGBTQ+ issues, according to news organization CalMatters). The council also passed an ordinance establishing a community review board with unappealable power over book selection and use.
Last year, library supporters fought back. In a June special election, voters passed measures to repeal the ordinance and to restrict the city’s ability to privatize libraries, each with roughly 60% of the vote. A court victory followed in September, when an Orange County Superior Court judge sided with the American Civil Liberties Union and ruled against the city’s restrictive library policies, finding that they violated the California Freedom to Read Act. (The council voted last fall to appeal the decision.)
2. Jones gets an apology in a Louisiana defamation case
Mere days after speaking out against censorship at a public library board meeting in 2022, school librarian Amanda Jones of Livingston Parish, Louisiana, found herself at the center of a social media firestorm fueled by right-wing organizations and bloggers who accused her of giving inappropriate materials to children and even instructing them about specific sex acts. She became one of the first librarians to sue for defamation in the recent wave of censorship cases.
Three years later, her long court journey notched a partial win. In November, Jones announced that she had settled her suit against social media agitator Ryan Thames for $1 and a public apology, which he shared on social media.
“This was never about money—it was about integrity,” Jones wrote when she reposted the video. “I’m grateful that the false statements have been publicly corrected and that the truth is now clear. I hope this outcome serves as a reminder that words carry weight and that accountability matters.”
A parallel defamation suit against conservative advocacy group Citizens for a New Louisiana and its leader is ongoing, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
3. Ohio and Oregon voters turn out to protect library funding
Eighteen of 20 library funding levies on the ballot in Ohio were approved or renewed by voters in November, with the other two rejected by narrow margins.
This overwhelming show of support came amid increasing pressure on library funding. Months earlier, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed a budget that replaced a longstanding funding formula for libraries with a line-item appropriation that could make them more vulnerable to cuts, per Cleveland.com. Meanwhile, citizen groups are circulating petitions to eliminate property taxes, which can generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue for some of the state’s largest library systems.
Similarly, in Washington County, Oregon, about 58% of voters in November approved Measure 34-345, a library levy increase from 22 cents to 37 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value, set to go into effect in July. Washington County Cooperative Library Services (WCCLS) will now see 60% of its revenue funded by the tax, a jump of about 15%, according to Oregon Live. The levy has been renewed every five years since 2006.
In 2025, there were notable examples of voters, courts, and candidates across the country affirming the profession’s core values of intellectual freedom and inclusive access.
The increased funding will be distributed to the 16 libraries across WCCLS via a new formula, following a change approved by the county’s board of commissioners just a week before the vote. Libraries previously received funding based on the number of checkouts per location; now, funds will be distributed based on population density around each library. As reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting, some library leaders believe this new model corrects an imbalance in funding, while critics say the change will disproportionately benefit the county’s smaller libraries, which see lower foot traffic.
4. Voters in Pennsylvania and Texas flip school board majorities
Progressive candidates in Texas picked up all three open seats on the board of Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District, closing out a contentious November election with a sound rejection of far-right encroachment across the state’s third-largest school district. These wins unseated two incumbents—including the then–board president, who received about 15,000 fewer votes than his successor—and shut out three hopefuls who had advocated for book bans and altering curricula to remove references to vaccines and climate change, among other issues.
A similar flip took place in Gibsonia, Pennsylvania. In March 2025, amid bitter community debate, the board of Pine-Richland School District voted 5–4 to pass a policy that immediately placed final authority to add or remove library books in the hands of the school board rather than the superintendent. In June, that same majority approved a budget with no property tax increases that would fund the school system, TribLive reported, despite the superintendent’s repeated warnings about a seven-figure deficit going into the 2026–2027 school year.
The tide turned in November, when a group of Democratic candidates opposed to the review-board policy and concerned about the projected budget deficit—who campaigned together under the banner “Together for PR”—swept the four open seats, flipping the majority.
5. Teens lead the charge to restore titles in Georgia reading competition
Every year, the Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl brings together school and public library communities across Georgia to answer trivia questions about books nominated for Georgia’s book awards for young readers. But when the project’s steering committee released the 2026 high school list in early October, eight of the 20 titles that had been nominated for the Georgia Peach Book Awards were notably absent. The committee said it received “numerous reconsideration complaints” about some of the titles, all authored by female-identifying writers or writers from other marginalized backgrounds.
Within days of the omissions going public last fall, teenage students at local high schools organized to sound the alarm, circulating petitions and contacting the authors of the removed works to rally support, as reported by Book Riot. On October 15, the steering committee officially reinstated the affected titles via an open letter.
“The Georgia Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl was founded on a desire to foster a love of reading in Georgia children through a friendly and engaging competition,” the statement reads. “The passion and advocacy we have seen reminded us that the spirit of this competition lives strongest in those who read, think, and speak up.”
