Georgia book bans in 2025: Cobb County ‘doubles down’

Cobb County Schools made national news in 2024 for its superintendent’s removal of controversial books from school libraries. Here’s why 2025 promises more to come.

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In 2022, Georgia liberalized its book ban and classroom censorship laws, the fallout of which has been seen across the state’s literary landscape. Last year saw an escalation not only in book bans affecting classrooms, school libraries and curricula but also in intimidation against purveyors of books, such as teachers and librarians, and increased attempts to restrict book access in public libraries.

In 2025, experts expect instances of book censorship and the laws that enable it to continue to multiply, particularly given President Trump’s 2024 campaign rhetoric and the contents of Project 2025, a populist policy plan spearheaded by The Heritage Foundation that Trump has at times endorsed.

Here’s what to expect for the remainder of the year.

Public schools

Background: There were new book bans in at least two Georgia school districts in 2024. In January, Marietta City Schools announced it had removed 25 books from its shelves, inciting community uproar and inspiring the genesis of Marietta in the Middle, a community watchdog nonprofit that aims to keep parents and other community stakeholders informed about changes to the district’s policies regarding libraries, curricula and student well-being. The Cobb County School Board banned a total of 32 books from school shelves in multiple announcements throughout last year, leading to parent protests at school board meetings, one of which devolved into a physical confrontation.

Both the Cobb and Marietta school boards cited the books’ sexual content as the reason for the bans, referring to the books as “pornographic,” with Cobb County School District Superintendent Chris Ragsdale calling the bans a matter of “good and evil.” Parents, teachers and students have pushed back against this reasoning, suggesting that the real reasons for the bans boil down to homophobia and gender and racial politics.

Of the 25 books banned in Marietta, 11 feature LGBTQ+ themes or characters. Many of these books — which include George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue, Mike Curato’s Flamer and Juno Dawson’s This Book Is Gay — also appear on Cobb County Schools’ banned books list.

What to expect in 2025: At Cobb County’s first school board meeting of the year, Ragsdale announced countywide bans for two more books — Ellen Hopkins’ Triangles and Jaycee Dugard’s A Stolen Life — bringing the school district’s banned book count to 34.

The announcement is an early signal that the trend that began in 2023 over parent, student and teacher objections is likely to continue in 2025. Meanwhile, parent groups such as the Cobb Community Care Coalition and student groups such as the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition continue to organize around fighting censorship in Cobb County schools.

Ragsdale’s censorship policy got a surprise boon on January 26, when the Department of Education announced that it was dropping its investigation of book ban-related civil rights complaints, including one against Cobb County, calling the bans a “hoax.” Experts have noted that the department’s policy changes are not a change in the law, predicting that both civil rights lawsuits and book censorship are likely to increase as a result.

In Marietta, by contrast, the school board is unlikely to announce more bans this year, says Kayla Sargent, executive director of Marietta in the Middle, speculating that the board has been sufficiently embarrassed by the unpopularity of the current bans.

“What’s actually more concerning [than the book bans] are the ways in which our educational leaders have spent the past couple years totally watering down our curriculum.” The books that appear on the curriculum, she says, “have been totally stripped of any kind of American history related to civil rights, any kind of LGBT characters at all.” The district removed so many books from the high school curriculum, Sargent says, that, for a while, no novels appeared on the district’s two-year International baccalaureate language and literature course.

“What I don’t see happening,” she says, “is any attempt to bring back more accurate American history. It’s being censored out of fine arts, social studies, history and ELA. It’s kind of widespread. Anything that could at all be deemed as making white children feel guilty about their race [is excluded].” And, she says, teachers are so severely restricted by rules about sexual content that “they can’t really show any [videos] at all without evaluation and approval.” She continues, “The level of micromanaging is pretty intense.”

Sargent says that Marietta in the Middle will focus this year’s efforts on disseminating information. “We have a majority brown and Black electorate here,” she says. “These parents, these families, these grandparents would be sick to their stomach to hear that their Black and brown children, and even their white children, cannot learn about the history of this town we’re raising our children in.”

Teacher lawsuits

Background: Cobb County fifth-grade teacher Katie Rinderle was fired in 2023 for reading My Shadow Is Purple, a book on gender identity and self-acceptance, to her class after purchasing it at her school’s Scholastic Book Fair. Rinderle appealed her firing to the Georgia State Board of Education, which upheld the school board’s decision along party lines in February. Her Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) lawyers appealed to Cobb Superior Court to reverse her termination, and the case remained there throughout 2024.

In February 2024, Rinderle, along with current Cobb teacher Tonya Grimmke and the Georgia Association of Educators, filed a separate federal discrimination lawsuit alleging that the school board’s interpretation of the divisive concepts law is unconstitutionally vague and its effects are harmful to LGBTQ+ students and other students from minority groups. The suit was later joined by the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition and a transgender Cobb student. In August, the Department of Justice, along with 16 states and the District of Columbia, filed amicus briefs in Rinderle’s favor.

What to expect in 2025: Both the federal and state cases are currently in limbo. Michael Tafelski, who leads the Education Justice Team at the SPLC, among the groups representing the teachers in the federal suit, expects a decision on Rinderle’s termination appeal sometime in mid-spring.

Cobb County Schools has filed a motion to dismiss the federal case, which is currently in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Georgia. If the court dismisses that motion, the case will probably spend the rest of the year in discovery. Whatever the court decides, he says, it’s likely that the case will be appealed to the Georgia State Board of Appeals, which has discretionary power over the cases it hears.

Meanwhile, Tafelski says the school district’s policies, fashioned after Georgia’s divisive concepts law, are vaguely worded and the district has demonstrated a harsh attitude toward books and teachers, allowing leaders to apply restrictions unevenly. The result is teachers who are intimidated into avoiding books dealing with racial and LGBTQ+ themes and a hostile environment for students from vulnerable groups, according to Tafelski.

“You’ve got teachers across the state of Georgia who are self-censoring because they have no idea what the [divisive concepts] law means. They don’t understand the policies,” Tafelski says. “Teachers say to me all the time, ‘Well, I don’t wanna lose my job. I saw what happened to Katie Rinderle.’”

Tafelski says the lawsuits have not had a chilling effect on Cobb County’s censorship policies. “They’ve doubled down on this.” He continues, “They veil it as ‘We’re protecting students,’ when, in reality, they are continuing to harm students and the mental health of students, the well-being of students.”

Tafelski notes that Department of Education’s decision to drop its investigations into book ban complaints does not affect either of the Rinderle cases. He expects, however, that leaders in Cobb County and other districts prone to book removals are likely to “feel more confident that they can ban more books, and you’ll see the rhetoric increase.”

Libraries

Background: Georgia’s public libraries are also seeing policy changes that restrict the availability of books. These changes include so-called “soft” bans, where books are removed or otherwise limited preemptively without public notice, along with regulations, policies and laws that restrict books’ accessibility.

In 2024, the boards of library systems in Athens-Clarke, Columbia, Coweta and Oconee counties  saw increased requests to move children’s books with LGBTQ+ themes to libraries’ adult sections. This type of reshelving significantly reduces the likelihood that the books will be checked out, leading to their ultimate removal from the library — all without an official ban.

In the Georgia Legislature, lawmakers attempted to pass a handful of bills that would have expanded local authorities’ power over libraries, including bills that would allow prosecution of librarians who allow minors to check out books later determined to be inappropriate and prohibit libraries and schools from using public funds on materials and programs sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA).

What to expect in 2025: It is likely, given the ongoing controversies over Georgia’s existing bans and its increasing number of new bans, that soft bans in public libraries will continue and increase in the coming year. Though neither of the state Legislature’s library-restricting bills passed last year, some experts have noted that they may be revived in the 2025 session, and other states have already begun circulating similar bills in their own Legislatures.

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Rachel Wright has a Ph.D. from Georgia State University and an MA from the University College Dublin, both in creative writing. Her work has appeared in The Stinging Fly and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a novel.