Honorable members of the US House of Representatives,
I write on behalf of the American Booksellers Association, the trade association of independent bookstores representing over 3,200 bookstore companies nationwide, to express our deep concern with HR 2616. This book censorship bill would chill expression across the book industry, hurt small businesses, and decrease the variety of books in the marketplace.
A National Book Ban Impacting Countless Titles
HR 2616 is a national book ban bill, and even its authors likely cannot say where the banning will stop. The prohibition on use of ESEA funds to “teach or advance gender ideology” could impact everything from picture books about crayons to Plato’s Symposium, and it appears to apply to library materials as well as curriculum. The key term, “gender ideology,” is defined only in an executive order that has not been approved by Congress and could change in future administrations. It is not radical to say we should know what a law does before we pass it.
Defunding Schools, Hurting Small Business
Attacking ESEA funding, the largest source of federal funding to public schools, defunds schools that are already struggling, which also impacts the bookstores that serve them. This vague bill would stymie or halt spending on all books, regardless of content, as already-overburdened school districts struggled to comply. Bookstores that supply local districts with library materials, book fairs, and author visits will see a massive decrease in book purchases. In states where book bans are most common, booksellers have been forced to shrink or discontinue their school programs, impacting jobs and local economies.
Lessening Market Diversity
We have already started to see less diversity in the book market due to book bans. School and library sales are essential parts of the publishing ecosystem. When stories are banned from that marketplace, authors are silenced and have their livelihoods threatened. Book ban laws censor age-appropriate stories that people just do not want told, increasingly target history, and disproportionately impact people of color, LGBTQIA2S+ people, and people with disabilities. Loss of market diversity hurts readers as consumers, as thinkers, and as human beings.
For the sake of small businesses and their employees, the communities they enrich, the parents who want their kids to learn about the world as it is through the safety of a kids book, and the kids who just want to get back to their books, please vote against this bill.