South Carolina Becomes the Nation's Top Book Banner

The State Board of Education bans an additional ten books from all public schools.

This piece has been updated to include further excerpts from public comment and additional information.

Today, the South Carolina State Board of Education voted to make the state the most prolific statewide book-banner in America, with at least twenty-one titles removed from all SC public schools and public school libraries.

Newly-removed books include:

• Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Adichie

• Hopeless, by Colleen Hoover

• Collateral, Identical, and Tricks, all three by Ellen Hopkins

• Last Night at the Telegraph Club, by Malinda Lo

• Empire of Storms and Kingdom of Ash, by Sarah J. Maas

• Living Dead Girl, by Elizabeth Scott

• Lucky, by Alice Sebold

Some books banned in all state public schools by the South Carolina Department of Education.

It wasn’t clear that the vote would go this way. During last month’s Full Board meeting, members engaged in a prolonged discussion about the regulation, with special focus on the way a single person in Beaufort who had challenged 97 books was effectively forcing the Board to reconsider every book, though they had already been considered by committees during a lengthy process at the district level. Effectively, several members said, one Beaufort resident was making decisions on behalf of the entire state.

Morning Policy Committee

The morning’s State Board Policy Committee meeting saw a public comment period that was heavily focused on Regulation 43-170, which requires the Board to hear book challenges, as well as charter school policy. The discussion of the two issues during public comment echoed in some significant ways.

The Policy and Legislative Committee of the South Carolina State Board of Education hears public comment, May 6, 2025.

First, an attorney speaking on behalf of charter schools suggested that the Board seek a State Attorney General decision on whether or not a Lexington school district had a legal obligation to offer a piece of land, which it was already moving to sell, to charter schools. Part of his argument relied on state court precedents that an entire statute should be considered when interpreting state law, rather than parts of the statute out the full context.

Testimony against 43-170, intentionally or not, drew on a parallel argument about incorporating more of the obscenity law that provides the definition for content that is “not age appropriate”.

For example, SC ACLU’s Josh Malkin— also an attorney— said that 43-170 had “produced nonsensical outcomes,” citing “500-page books” that have been removed for very brief mentions of so-called “sexual content”.

Malkin read out the many requirements of the so-called “Miller test” built into state obscenity laws— including South Carolina’s— which requires would-be censors to consider a number of factors, including “artistic and literary merit” and “community standards,” in order to avoid First Amendment violations. The Board had chosen not to incorporate these other parts of the law into its definition of “depictions of sexual conduct” in the regulation, resulting in a standard which can result in books containing even brief depictions of “sexual content” can result in a book being removed from all schools in the state.

Both Malkin and a Beaufort-area attorney who testified urged the Board to reconsider legal advice it had received from lawyers who they said had a vested interest in defending the regulation. The seemed to reference the regulation’s purported author, Miles Coleman. (As I’ve written before, Coleman is also the President of the Columbia, SC, Lawyers Chapter of the conservative Federalist Society, and the Secretary of an organization called School Ministries, which advocates for “released time Bible instruction,” where public school students are given time during the school day to receive religious instruction for school credit.) Staff attorney Robert Cathcart has also been heavily involved in defending and interpreting the regulation at Board and committee meetings.

Malkin urged any parents listening who had issues with their own children accessing certain books to contact school librarians to opt their own children out, instead of challenging books in a way that would impact “about 700,000” public school students.

The Beaufort attorney said that she had been following meetings about the regulation closely and said, “I heard more than one time that the opinions being offered were not by or from lawyers, so here I am, to speak as a lawyer from South Carolina”. Presumably, she was referencing Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver’s comments at the end of the last Full Board meeting in April, in which she indirectly responded to points made by Board member Dr. David O’Shields and members of the public by pointing out they weren’t attorneys .)

The attorney said that prior to the introduction of the regulation, Weaver “hired an outside lawyer, to the tune of $25,000 in taxpayer money to draft the proposed regulations” (presumably Coleman, who according to The State, had been paid as much as $40,000 for his work for the Department). She reminded the committee that attorneys serve the interests of their clients, and that since Weaver (who campaigned on a Moms for Liberty-esque “parental rights” platform) was the client, the Board had received “biased” legal advice.

She said the Board had been told, for example, that it had to pass the regulation in anticipation of book censorship a law that was to be passed by the state legislature this session (it never passed), but that, “on the contrary, a law is passed, and regulations are then passed to comply with it”.

Malkin, for his part, warned the Board that it was likely to face legal challenges if it continued to apply the regulation as it had; his client, he said, was the Constitution.

Two representatives of the South Carolina Library Association (SCASL) also spoke during both the Policy and Full Board meetings, urging the Board to consider how book bans affect students and literacy, and asking the Board to reinstate its fifty-year relationship with the organization, which Weaver ended last summer. They referenced how the regulation was part of a larger culture of attacks on educators, and gave examples of harassment and defamation against librarians. (SCASL gave similar testimony to a committee convened by the SC legislature last year; Weaver cited their reports of harrassment as one of the reasons for breaking off the relationship.)

During her remarks before the committee, and later before the full Board, current SCASL president Jamie Gregory explained that

Our members have confidentially shared stories throughout this school year of local political groups naming them personally on social media as well as their schools in efforts to spread defaming disinformation that damages their reputations. Others have been told not to purchase new books this year while waiting to see the actions this board would take to implement regulation 43.170. Some have decided not to order any books they think could possibly be targeted by the regulation. All of these are unacceptable and are the direct result of rhetoric stemming from regulation 43.170, and I don’t think any of you would agree that this type of climate best serves our students and teachers.

Afternoon Full Board meeting

The Board seemed to have planned in advance to spend significant time discussing book bans during the afternoon meeting.

At the end of the last meeting, in which there was unprecedented opposition among Board members to continue the current course with the regulation, Superintendent Weaver suggested that she would provide some additional information to the Board about the regulation.

The Board met an hour and a half earlier than its usual 1 PM start time, and then immediately entered executive session. They stayed there for almost two and a half hours, presumably hearing legal opinions about the regulation (perhaps from Robert Cathcart and/ or Miles Coleman, the attorneys most publicly associated with the regulation).

In the afternoon public comment session, too, a number of speakers made similar warnings about the consequences— both intended and otherwise— of the regulation.

But the Board moved to remove all ten books on its docket, with O’Shields and member Tony Vincent— both of whom spoke at length about the potential dangers of book bans at the last meeting— voting against removals.

There was no discussion about its reasoning this time.

Further reading…