I sure hope one of these increasing attempts to ban books sparks a lawsuit or some such legal challenge that ends up either in federal court, of before the Supreme Court. Unless I'm missing something, the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech does not only apply to the spoken word, but to the written word, too. One ruling from either a federal judge or the Supreme Court asserting this rather obvious (to me) fact will bring an end to book banning.

In fact, in a relatively recent Supreme Court case having to do with an Asian rock band whose Asian founder deliberately gave the band the name The Slants--a long-standing slur against Asians--as a way of "taking back" the term, as it were, but some other Asian people tried to prevent the band from using that name.

It went up before the Supreme Court, and their unanimous ruling was that the band could call itself whatever it wished, because the First Amendment applied to all speech, including speech some might find offensive, insulting, or otherwise inappropriate. The Court's opinion was written by Justice Alito, who wisely pointed out that it was a tribute to the First Amendment that this was true.

So, all these self-appointed hall monitors, these people who see it as their job and their right to delete books to "protect" both children and adults...I feel confidant they're going to get spanked hard by a federal court that has the power to do so.