As book bans surge across Texas and the country, Austin’s Library Commission is urging the City Council to take a formal stand against censorship by declaring the city a “Book Safe Harbor,” a move supporters say could strengthen protections for what remains on public library shelves.

The proposal lands amid an intensifying political fight over who decides what people, especially children, can read. In Texas, battles over books have transformed school board meetings, county commissioners courts and the state Capitol into recurring flashpoints over race, gender identity and sexuality.

That fight reached new ground this year when Texas lawmakers passed SB 13, shifting some power over public school library collections away from librarians and toward elected school board members and parents, a change critics say could accelerate book removals.

While schools have been the front line of the battle, advocates warn public libraries could be next. For example, in 2025, Texas House advanced HB 3225, which would have limited kids’ access to sexually explicit books in public libraries. While the bill didn’t ultimately pass, censorship efforts are driving a growing push for “Book Safe Harbors” local ordinances meant to preserve access to books.

Austin’s Library Commission passed their recommendation Monday, urging the Austin City Council to consider designating the city a Book Safe Harbor. The goal is to “defend the right to read at an ordinance level,” said Liz Garton Scanlon, an Austin-based children’s book author who is part of the Texas leadership team of Authors Against Book Bans.

After the organization encouraged the creation of Book Safe Harbors in local municipalities, Garton Scanlon brought the idea to the Library Commission. Book bans weren’t on her radar when she began writing children’s books 20 years ago, but over the past five years, she has observed the issue intensifying dramatically. She said one of her most popular books, All the World, ended up on a Pennsylvania challenge list, though the effort to ban it was ultimately unsuccessful.

“There are two women at one point sharing a tandem bike, and at one point sitting on a porch swing. Now, they could be mother and daughter, they could be sisters, they could be partners,” she said, explaining why her book became a target. “That’s not what the text is about.”

Garton Scanlon said the proposal reaffirms work already approved by the City Council, including the 2022 Freedom to Read resolution, another proactive measure against book banning at Austin Public Library, but it goes a step further by making it part of city code.

“The goal is not just a declaration,” Garton Scanlon said, “but an official ordinance.”

Do books ever get banned at the Austin Public Library?

While the Austin Public Library did not want to comment on the commission’s recommendation prior to an Austin City Council vote, a spokesperson said the library supports intellectual freedom and protecting access to information.

“We really are in this moment where attacks on the freedom to read, where restrictions on what people have access to, are increasing,” said Baylor Johnson, communications manager for the Austin Public Library.

While thousands of book titles are challenged each year, Johnson said requests to remove or reclassify books at the Austin Public Library are relatively rare. From August 2022 to May 2026, the library received five requests to remove books and three requests to relevel, or reclassify, books. Johnson said four of the five removal requests resulted in the books being kept, while one book was reclassified.

Johnson said any patron with concerns can request a review or removal. A committee then reviews the request and makes a recommendation to the library director.

He said that while the library “welcomes community input on titles,” Austin Public Library librarians are trained professionals who stay attuned to “industry standards, best practices, and making sure that the collection that we have available for the community is suitable for the community.”

State of book banning nationally and in Texas

PEN America, an organization that tracks book banning, found 6,870 instances of book banning nationwide during the 2024–25 school year. In Texas, the organization documented 1,781 instances of book bans during the same school year, second only to Florida.

Last year, Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, introduced Senate Bill 13, which, in addition to giving more authority to school boards over library materials, prohibits public school libraries from carrying books with “indecent content or profane content” or “grossly offensive” language.

“No child should pick up a book in their school library of all places and be exposed to inappropriate, harmful material within its pages,” Paxton said, according to reporting by The Texas Tribune. “These young brains cannot unsee what they see.”

Anne Russey, the co-founder of the Texas Freedom to Read Project, told Austin Current efforts to ban books with controversial themes have intensified, including in public libraries. She cited an instance in Llano County, about 75 miles east of Austin, where the county pulled 17 books from the shelves of its public library, some with topics discussing gender and race.

“Those should exist for every community member to access if they choose to,” she said.

While Russey was not involved in the Book Safe Harbor proposal, she agreed it would provide an added layer of protection for public libraries, which she says are likely to continue seeing censorship threats.

“As parents, we don’t want to decide what other people’s children are reading,” Russey said. “We don’t want other adults making those choices for our children, and don’t think our government needs to be meddling in that business either.”