You might be surprised to learn that the cost of banning books is enormous.
And those costs are paid for by you, the taxpayer.
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For example, an attempt to ban the book The Black Friend, on Being a Better White Person ended up costing the Spring Branch School District in Texas 226 hours of time, divided between sixteen people, and cost more than $30,000! (Click to Tweet)
For context: Texas has more than twelve hundred school districts and Texas has attempted to ban thousands of books and book bans will cost Texas at least 3.6 million dollars per year. (Click to Tweet)
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Every one of these dollars spent on book ban attempts could have gone to pay for school improvements, classroom materials, better pay for teachers, or actually educating children.
The book ban fight in the public library in Llano County, Texas, cost the county over $100,000 in legal fees in the first 6 months of 2023, and they recently lost their appeal in the Supreme Court in 2024, which cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars more. Money that could have gone towards repairing potholes, providing public services, or, you know... actually governing.
Not to be outdone, the review of books at Hamilton East Public Library in Indiana has cost taxpayers over $300,00. (Click to Tweet)
In Florida, book bans cost each district between $34,000 to $135,000 annually, and Florida has over 70 school districts. That means that millions of dollars are being spent to remove books. (Click to Tweet)
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In Clark County, Nevada, each book ban costs taxpayers around $5,000, and there have been dozens. (Click to Tweet)
According to records obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune, the book ban cost in Utah's Davis School District alone topped $27,000 during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. (Click to Tweet)
If Northampton County Moms for Liberty members in Pennsylvania and those connected with the group move ahead with requests to ban all 23 books, the Nazareth Area School District may have to spend more than $100,000 in taxpayer funds to review them. (Click to Tweet)
The North Dakota State Library, one single library, estimated that the costs of re-evaluating its collection to comply with what they believe is the intention of loosely worded house bills would be $3.3 million. (Click to Tweet)
Evey $10 we raise helps us support the freedom to read in hundreds of communities.
The worst part is that, according to a Washington Post analysis, just 11 adults are responsible for 60% of requests to ban books from school libraries across America. (Click to Tweet)
Right now, the extreme minority is costing you, the taxpayer, and your students millions of dollars to bow to their wishes and strip books away from American families.
This is absurd. It is irrational. It needs to stop.