Imagine that you decided to go to your local library to check out a book but you couldn’t find it on the shelf. You ask the librarian for help locating it, but they inform you it’s not available—not because someone else has checked it out, but because the government has physically removed it after deciding they don’t want you to read it.

This isn’t the plot of a dystopian novel, it’s the reality that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed in its recent decision to not hear arguments in the book ban case: Leila Green Little et al. v. Llano County. In leaving the Fifth Circuit ruling in place, SCOTUS effectively granted state and local governments in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas the authority to determine what materials you can and cannot read. This means people in these states do not have the same First Amendment rights as the rest of the country. And that should raise alarm for everyone_._ 

In the U.S., efforts to remove books from school and public libraries have existed for many decades, but in the past few years the intensity has escalated. PEN America counted 6,870 instances of book bans last school year, up from 156 challenges to library, school, and university materials just five years ago. Recently, the issue seems to have taken a back seat in the news, but the efforts show no signs of slowing down. 

In upholding Little v. Llano, SCOTUS opened the door for book bans to proliferate even more, leaving us little legal recourse to stop their implementation. Librarians may be the only line of defense we have left, and many of us have already lost our jobs for refusing to pull materials. We are disturbed to think how many more of our colleagues around the country will be put in this precarious position.

Nobody ever believes this will happen to them. They look at us, two librarians in Louisiana and Texas, and assume these battles are somehow unique to our ZIP codes. But that’s the point. The architects of these censorship campaigns—national conservative political groups—test their most aggressive tactics in small, rural places they believe the rest of the country will write off. What feels distant to some is the trial run for everyone. And now, after the Supreme Court refused to intervene, the message is unmistakable: If they can get away with it here, it’s coming to your libraries too. What’s happening on our shelves isn’t a local quirk, it’s a national stress test of your rights.