Virginia schools removed 200+ different books from libraries, report finds

Kate Seltzer, The Virginian-Pilot on Jul 14, 2025

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Most Virginia school divisions surveyed by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission did not remove any books from school libraries based on content in the last five years. But a handful of school divisions account for the vast majority of the 223 different book titles that were removed based on content during that time.

JLARC was directed by the General Assembly earlier this year to survey school divisions about school library book removals, and 92 of the state’s 132 divisions responded.

“The top five divisions accounted for 75% of all book removal activities,” said Justin Brown, senior associate director at JLARC, who presented the group’s findings to the legislative committee members Monday.

The book removals were concentrated in Hanover, which removed 125 book titles; Rockingham, which removed 57; and Goochland, which removed 34. In Hampton Roads, divisions that reported having removed books for reasons other than normal wear and tear generally reported removals in lower numbers if at all. Virginia Beach removed 16 different books; York County removed seven, Chesapeake removed two and Williamsburg-James City County removed one.

Newport News, Portsmouth and Hampton school divisions said they did not remove any books based on content, and Norfolk Public Schools did not respond to the survey.

The most cited reasons for book removals were sexually explicit content and local policy. One of the oft-cited reasons was a reference to Virginia Code, which requires schools to notify parents of sexually explicit content in instructional materials and provide an alternative if parents request it. The law does not weigh in on whether books with sexually explicit content should be present in libraries generally.

“When this bill was first passed, I think there was a prediction that some of us made that this is exactly how it would be read,” said Del. Marcus Simon, D-Falls Church. “Isn’t there a danger that once a complaint has been made, the path of least resistance for some of these school systems would be to, instead of coming up with an alternative assignment for that kid, would be remove the book and deprive all kids of the opportunity to read it?”

Regardless of the reason, schools maintain lots of discretion about the material they hold in their libraries.

In February 2024, the Virginia Beach School Board voted to create a committee to determine how to deal with library materials deemed to contain “sexually explicit content.” At the time, critics said the policy was overly burdensome and that there were no sexually explicit materials in elementary school libraries. Elementary schools must review all library materials for sexually explicit content — the deadline to parse, in some cases, more than 18,000 books was extended to December 31 of this year.

Virginia Beach maintains a list of about 50 books that have been deemed sexually explicit, but it wasn’t clear which of those have been removed from its schools’ libraries.

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