New Jersey State Law Now Codifies the “Freedom to Read”

On December 9, 2024, Governor Murphy signed P.L. 2024, Chapter 96 into law. This statute, entitled the “Freedom to Read” Act, mandates that school districts adopt a policy dictating how library materials are selected and how removal requests are addressed.

This statute addresses an increasingly hot topic of “book banning”, which has taken center-stage in the national discourse. In 2023, the American Library Association reported 14 attempts in New Jersey to restrict access to 28 books, while over the same period there were over 1,200 demands to ban over 4,200 book titles nationwide. This data demonstrated a 65% increase in book ban attempts over 2022. While preliminary data for 2024 demonstrates a decline in attempts as compared to 2023, the data reported demonstrates a continued increase in requests compared to 2020. Many of the titles sought to be banned address race, equity, and LGBTQIA+ topics.

Under the “Freedom to Read” Act, the Commissioner of Education must create a model policy preventing the restriction of access to books based on a disagreement with the topics of themes contained within library materials. Using this model policy, school districts will be required to create and adopt their own policy related to the curation of library material within their school libraries. At a minimum, the adopted policy must “acknowledge that library material should not be excluded from a school library because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to its creation”, as well as “promote the free expression and free access to ideas by students by prohibiting censorship of library material.”

The policy to be adopted must also contain a procedure regarding a request for removal of material from a school library. School districts can create their own procedure which, at a minimum, require the creation of a removal request form; creation of a review committee for any time such a request is submitted; and mandate a maximum period of 30 days for the review committee to issue recommendations and make a final determination.

During this review, the policy must provide for the challenged material to remain in the library and accessible to students. The Freedom to Read Act also mandates that boards of education must ensure that their school libraries “include diverse and inclusive material” and “allow a student to reserve, check out, or access any age and grade-appropriate library material.”

Most notably, the Freedom to Read Act provides civil and criminal immunity to any library media specialist or other teaching staff member who acts in good faith under the law. Such individuals are also granted with the right to pursue a civil cause of action for emotional distress, defamation, libel, slander, or other relevant tort action against any person who harasses the individual for complying with the Freedom to Read Act. If such suit is filed and the library media specialist or other teaching staff member is deemed a prevailing party, the Act entitles them to an award of reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs against the defendant.

The Freedom to Read Act further modifies the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination to incorporate protection against discriminatory acts against a school library media specialist, teaching staff member, librarian, or any staff member of a public library based upon their refusal to remove library material except as permitted by the law.

The Freedom to Read Act takes effect on December 9, 2025, but the Commissioner of Education is empowered to take any anticipatory action as necessary to implement the law. Thus, no current action is required by school districts. Instead, we expect that the Commissioner of Education will issue their model policy in the coming months, and boards of education should anticipate adopting a mandated policy mirroring that model.