State board delays vote on removing more books from South Carolina public schools
COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCBD) – A decision that could have made South Carolina the nation's leader in state-mandated school book bans has been put on hold.
The State Board of Education voted Tuesday to postpone consideration of whether to remove 10 books from public school libraries and classrooms after several board members raised concerns about the review process.
The following books were recommended for removal by the Instructional Materials Review Committee during their March 13 meeting:
Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
Lucky by Alice Sebold
Living Dead Girl by Elizabeth Scott
Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas
Identical by Ellen Hopkins
Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas
Hopeless by Colleen Hoover
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimananda Ngozi Adichie
Collateral by Ellen Hopkins
At issue is a regulation adopted last year that governs what is considered 'age and developmentally appropriate' material for K-12 schools, prohibiting books that contain descriptions or visual depictions of 'sexual conduct.'
To determine what is 'sexual conduct,' the regulation uses the definition as outlined in a portion of the state's obscenity law.
Some educators argued that the definition is too broad, creating the possibility for inconsistency in what is and is not allowed.
Mary Foster, a Beaufort County parent and teacher, attempted to demonstrate that Tuesday while speaking in defense of 'Half of a Yellow Sun,' a historical fiction novel based on the Nigerian Civil War in the 1960s.
'These excerpts are not from Half of a Yellow Sun but are from a book your board voted to retain: 1984 by George Orwell,' Foster said, after reading several explicit passages.
To keep one and not the other would create a 'problematic' interpretation of the regulation, she said.
Robert Cathcart, a staff attorney tasked with presenting each book, said that the board has already established precedent as to what is considered a 'description' of sexual conduct.
In the case of '1984,' he said, sexual references were 'too brief, too generic, and too nonspecific' to rise to the level required for removal, but that wasn't true for at least one of the books currently under review.
'In this material specifically – 'Collateral' – these passages are long enough, contain enough explanatory detail, enough adjectives and adverbs to put the reader in that place and therefore paint that mental image,' he said.
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Further, Dr. David O'Shields, the superintendent of Laurens County School District 56, pointed to a section of the code in the obscenity law that says material should be considered 'as a whole' and suggested unintended legal consequences could arise if the board moved forward with removing the books.
He noted Tuesday that only five of the 10 titles were available at one of the district's high schools and that some had only been checked out a handful of times.
'I can't in good conscience after having done my own autopsy of what we have, I cannot and will if necessary be the only dissenting vote because I think we're misreading the law,' he said.
Then, there was another issue: the process by which books can be challenged.
The regulation established a system by which parents can challenge materials in their child's school that they believe fail to meet the standard. Parents must make a 'good faith effort' to address their concerns at the district level first but can appeal local decisions to the State Board of Education.
In this case, the challenge to the 10 titles originated from one parent in Beaufort County. That same parent has sought to have more than 90 titles pulled from public school shelves statewide.
Critics argued that ceding that power to one person is a problem, especially when the outcome would impact hundreds of thousands of students.
'This is an example of one individual determining what rights every parent in South Carolina has,' said Josh Malkin, advocacy director for the ACLU of South Carolina. 'Regardless of how you might feel about these books, regardless of your political leaning, the fact that it's so easy for one individual to take away your rights should be alarming and a call to action for everyone.'
Several board members seemed to agree.
'When does this thing stop?' asked Ken Richardson. 'I'm gonna be honest with you, I love Columbia…but I do not like to come up here every single meeting and have to vote on books that nobody in my area is even talking about.'
27 books have been challenged in South Carolina since the regulation was implemented last June, with 12 being removed or restricted from schools.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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