Massachusetts librarians have been threatened, doxxed, and told the books on their shelves could cost them their jobs. A new state law now draws a line around that work.
The Job Had Started to Feel Like a Target
School librarians in Massachusetts have spent the last few years doing the job and watching the job get treated like a crime. Challenge lists arrived. Pride story times needed police details. Staff got harassed on the phone, in person, and online.
Andrea Fiorillo, co-chair of the Massachusetts Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibilities Committee, told WBUR that when she took that post in 2019 she remembered fewer than 10 challenges to library materials in the state. By 2025, she said, there were 229 challenged titles. The turn, she said, came 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.”
At her library in Reading, the pressure was not theoretical. “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 said. “In 2024, we received a bomb threat and a death threat during a children’s story time.”
Senate sponsor Julian Cyr, speaking at the same signing, told WBUR the people were the part that stayed with him. “We heard from librarians who’ve been threatened, harassed, doxed and driven from their jobs,” he 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.”
What Healey Signed
A new state law now says a librarian who selects materials in good faith, following the written policy, cannot be fined or imprisoned for what is on the shelf.
Gov. Maura Healey signed the bill on August 10, 2026, at Franklin Public Library, which the governor’s office called the oldest public library in the United States. The statute’s name is An Act Regarding Free Expression, Senate bill S.3241. Advocates and the governor’s office call it the Freedom to Read law. WBUR reported that the House enacted the measure on July 31 on a 152-1 vote and the Senate on a voice vote that same day.
“This bill is about protecting the freedom to read, to learn, to ask difficult questions and to encounter ideas we might agree or disagree with,” Healey said at the signing, in remarks also carried by her office. “It’s also about protecting our teachers and librarians and allowing them to do their jobs.”
The protection is the line teachers and librarians will feel first. WBUR quoted the statute: 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.” The Authors Guild, whose general counsel attended the signing, read the same clause as preventing school employees from being “disciplined or imprisoned” for those good-faith selections. The Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, writing when the legislature sent the bill to Healey, said it “holds librarians harmless” from professional, civil, or criminal penalties for those decisions.
How a Book Comes Off the Shelf Now
The criminal-and-job shield is half the law. The other half is a process, so one complaint cannot quietly empty a shelf.
School districts, charter schools, and local education agencies have to adopt a written policy for how materials are selected, how the library is used, and how challenges are handled. WBUR and MBLC both say that policy has to align with American Library Association standards and be posted on the district or school’s website. Challenged materials stay on the shelf until the process is finished.
Only school employees, parents or guardians, or students enrolled in the school can lodge a school-library challenge. Materials can be removed only after notice, a public hearing, a finding by a school-personnel review committee, and a vote of the local school committee or charter board. The committee has to find, by clear and convincing evidence, that the material “taken as a whole” is “devoid of any educational, literary, artistic, personal or social value” or is not age appropriate. Students, parents, and guardians can appeal a removal in court.
FIRE, writing after the signing, called that structure “due process for books.” The group noted the viewpoint rule runs both ways: selection has to be based on professional training, “not on personal, political, or doctrinal views.” Librarians do not get to stock shelves by their own politics. School boards do not get to purge them by theirs.
The Local Fight That Helped Push It
North Star Reporter’s Geena Monahan traced part of the House push to a 2023 removal in North Attleborough. A poetry anthology, Woke: A Young Poet’s Call to Justice, came off the Martin Elementary School library after a single parent complaint, without public notice or a formal School Committee vote. The book later went back. The committee rewrote the challenge policy. Rep. Adam Scanlon, who opposed the removal, later joined Rep. John Moran in filing statewide legislation.
“What started with a local incident in North Attleborough has now become a statewide protection for the freedom to read and the free exchange of ideas,” Scanlon said after the signing, in the statement North Star published.
Maria McCauley, president of the American Library Association and director of the Cambridge Public Library, told North Star that a 2023 MBLC survey found 48.5 percent of responding school librarians had reconsidered displays, books, or other featured items because of the climate around challenges. “Library workers have faced unprecedented threats and harassment,” she said. “Intellectual freedom and the right to receive information in libraries are foundations of thriving democracies.”
What the Numbers Actually Show
Massachusetts was never the loudest book-ban state. It was not untouched either.
The Board of Library Commissioners said formal challenges to library materials, programs, and services have increased by 50 percent since fiscal 2023. Public libraries, not counting school libraries, reported 33 formal challenges in 2025, which the board said was more than the prior seven years combined. Eighty-six libraries reported 309 informal challenges to materials, services, and programs. Nationally, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom counted 4,235 titles challenged in 2025, second only to 2023, and warned that the tally is only a snapshot because not every challenge gets reported.
Fiorillo’s 229 Massachusetts titles in 2025 is the school-and-public figure she gave at the signing. It is a different count from MBLC’s public-library formal challenges. Both can be true. They are not the same list.
Who Still Gets a Say
Parents are not locked out. They can still raise a concern. They can still ask a school to reconsider a title. What they cannot do, under this statute, is skip the hearing, skip the committee, and skip the vote, then treat the librarian as the defendant.
Healey put the student side in one line at Franklin, as WBUR reported it: “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.”
That is the job the law is trying to put back on professional footing. The books stay unless the process says otherwise. The librarian who followed the policy is not supposed to be the person who pays.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a Massachusetts librarian still be prosecuted for a book on the shelf?
The new law says school library employees cannot be fined or imprisoned for selecting library materials when the selection is made in good faith and in accordance with the adopted policy. The same clause covers license loss, dismissal, discipline, probation, involuntary transfer, and other adverse employment actions. It is a shield for policy-following professional decisions, not a blank check for any title.
What is the official name of the Freedom to Read bill?
The statute is An Act Regarding Free Expression, S.3241. Gov. Healey signed it on August 10, 2026, at Franklin Public Library. Mass.gov, advocates, and later explainers call it the Freedom to Read law.
Can a parent still challenge a school library book?
Yes. Current students, parents or guardians, and school staff can request reconsideration. The book stays on the shelf during review. Removal requires notice, a public hearing, a clear-and-convincing finding by a school-personnel committee, and a vote of the local school committee or charter board.