Censorship of educational research databases

Censorship of educational research databases in the United States has been a concerted political effort since 2016. Activist groups that aim to change school curricula and ban books from libraries and schools are applying political and legislative pressure to limit the content in educational research databases to which libraries subscribe to give students online access to educational resources beyond what print collections can offer. In 2017, the American Library Association (ALA) found that 18% of challenges to library content were not book challenges, but about databases, games, and other non-book content. In 2023, ALA received reports of 1,247 localized censorship attempts on library resources, including databases. Recently, however, many of the educational research database censorship efforts take place in state legislatures; Idaho, Utah, Tennessee, and Oklahoma have encoded laws that specifically relate to educational research databases. Several states have failed legislative efforts, while other states have pending legislation in the 2024 season. Experts argue that these laws act on problems that do not actually exist. Where legistlating about educational research databases specifically has been unsuccessful, activists have moved to attempting to curtail the long-held legal definition of "obscenity," as defined by the United States Supreme Court in Miller v. California, known as the Miller Test. For example, recent Tennessee legislation removes protections for materials with educational value from being defined as "obscene."