Books are disappearing from shelves again – this time at the more than 100 schools serving the children of active-duty and civilian military personnel.

This rampant censorship is the result of the Department of Defense’s new policies banning books, classroom discussions, events, and extracurriculars that relate to race and gender in military-run schools on bases around the world. At the American Civil Liberties Union, we know that all students deserve access to a diverse education and the DOD’s efforts to strip them of this right violates the First Amendment. So we took the DOD to court.

Below, find the books the DOD claims promotes allegedly “woke” ideologies. A list of 233 of the 555 books alleged to be banned can be found here.

Authored by actress Julianne Moore, this story follows a young girl with bright red hair and lots of freckles, which earns her the nickname Freckleface Strawberry. While she’s full of energy and loves to play, she feels self-conscious about her freckles because they make her look different from other kids.

Set in the racially charged American South during the 1930s, this classic novel follows a young girl’s coming-of-age as her father, a principled lawyer, defends a man facing grave injustice. Through her innocent eyes, the story explores complex themes like morality, empathy, and social inequality. It’s been a part of school English curriculums since it was published in 1960.

This picture book tells the story of a boy named Julián who is inspired by beautiful mermaids he sees one day. As he explores his imagination and sense of identity, the book gently celebrates self-expression, acceptance, and the freedom to be oneself.

Set in a dystopian future where a theocratic regime strips women of their rights, this chilling narrative follows a woman forced into reproductive servitude. It examines themes of power, control, and resistance with eerie relevance and emotional depth.

In this contemporary young adult romance-mystery, a straight-laced high school girl finds herself unraveling clues left behind by her enigmatic classmate, Shara Wheeler. What follows is a playful yet meaningful journey through identity, love, and the unexpected connections we form.

Told through deeply personal letters, this novel traces the life of a Black woman in early 20th-century rural America as she endures hardship and seeks empowerment. The story is a powerful portrait of resilience, sisterhood, and the journey toward self-worth that has been adapted for stage and screen.

A staple found in many college and late-high school classrooms, this nonfiction work exposes how mass incarceration functions as a contemporary system of racial control in the United States. Through clear analysis and compelling research, it challenges readers to confront the deep inequalities within the criminal justice system.

Spanning decades and continents, this emotional novel follows the intertwined lives of two boys from Kabul, exploring how choices made in youth can echo across time. This novel has been banned repeatedly for exploring Afghan culture, Islam, and the impact of sexual violence.

This historical novel sheds light on the brutal realities of a reform school in the segregated American South. The book sheds light on the corruption within the criminal justice system and the cruelties faced by Black individuals, particularly during the Jim Crow era.

This nonfiction work highlights how marginalized communities are using fashion, beauty, and personal expression to reclaim narratives and celebrate cultural pride. It’s a visually rich celebration of identity and representation.

A comprehensive and urgent call to action edited by young activist Greta Thunberg, this book gathers insights from scientists, activists, and experts around the world to explain the climate crisis.

This expansive work reexamines major events in American history from a critical perspective, focusing on overlooked truths and lesser-known narratives. It challenges conventional interpretations and encourages readers to think more deeply about the nation’s past and future.

This cultural chronicle mixes personal stories, humor, and history to explore how Asian Americans have shaped—and been shaped by—pop culture. It celebrates milestones and moments of progress while examining the challenges of representation and identity.

On military bases across the globe, books are disappearing from shelves. Posters of historical figures, like Frida Kahlo, are being removed from walls. Black History Month celebrations are being cancelled.

This rampant censorship is the result of the Department of Defense’s new policies banning books, classroom discussions, events, and extracurriculars that relate to race and gender in military-run schools on bases around the world.

At the American Civil Liberties Union, we know that all students deserve access to a diverse education and, the DOD’s efforts to strip them of this right violates the First Amendment. So we took the DOD to court.

The U.S. Department of Defense runs public schools on military bases around the world for children of active-duty servicemembers and civilian military personnel. The agency that runs these schools is called the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), and it operates just like any other public school district -- except that it is run by the federal government and therefore is under the direct control of the secretary of defense and the commander in chief. DoDEA serves more than 67,000 students from kindergarten through high school in 161 schools across 11 countries, seven states, Guam, and Puerto Rico.

Compared to more traditional school districts in the U.S., DoDEA is among the most diverse, and most high achieving, in the nation.

But in January 2025, President Donald Trump signed three executive orders that impact DoDEA and how it operates:

• Executive Order (EO) 14168 titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”;
• EO 14185 titled “Restoring America’s Fighting Force”; and
• EO 14190 titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling”

These executive orders prohibit, among other things, the use of federal funds for anything that may promote “gender ideology” or “divisive concepts,” the latter of which has long been interpreted to cover a wide array of topics related to race, sex, and American history. EO 14185 explicitly instructs the military to stop “promoting, advancing or otherwise inculcating” several “un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational theories” -- all of which implicate books and curricula that relate to race and gender, as we have seen in public schools around the country since 2021. In President Trump’s words, these concepts add up to “wokeness” and must be removed from schools and the military: “Wokeness is trouble, wokeness is bad, it’s gone. It’s gone. And we feel so much better for it, don’t we? Don’t we feel better?” Trump said.

In February, DoDEA began implementing these new executive orders. In several emails to teachers and staff, administrators asked that they “ensure books potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology are removed from the student section” of the library. Parents were told that “books potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics” were to be relocated to a private section, away from students, for professional review. In an official, DOD-wide memo from January titled “Identity Months Dead at DoD,” the agency instructed all schools to cancel any “special activities and non-instructional events” related to Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Pride Month, and more.

A news outlet in Kentucky reported that librarians at Fort Campbell felt they needed to remove “any books that mention slavery, the civil rights movement or the treatment of Native Americans.” In that same school, an internal memo explicitly banned “monthly cultural observances” -- resulting in bulletin boards about Black history being taken down, and the cancellation of similar plans for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Several books and resources were removed from the curriculum, including chapters of two AP Psychology books that discussed human sexuality and a historically accurate, grade-appropriate biography of Robert Cashier, a civil war veteran who was born female but enlisted and fought valiantly as a man in the Union Army. This censorship extended into sex education, too. Several chapters were banned from DoDEA sex ed textbooks, including on communicable diseases, abuse, sexual harassment, and puberty.

The agency left no stone unturned. Even school yearbooks were implicated: no “visual depictions, written content, or editorial choices” that may indicate support for “social transition” was allowed.

According to DoDEA itself, 555 books and 41 curricular materials were removed from schools for review. The court recently ordered them to disclose what they were, but while confirmation is pending, we have compiled a list of 233 titles that were allegedly banned using news reporting, declarations from plaintiffs, and official documentation from DoDEA. This includes books like Freckleface Strawberry by Julianne Moore, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and Julián Is a Mermaid by Jessica Love, and hundreds more.

DoDEA has refused to confirm which books are officially on the chopping block systemwide, despite pleas from parents, students, and advocates. As with other school districts, the vast majority of books allegedly banned within DoDEA are by or about women, LGBTQ people, and people of color.

This is a direct violation of the First Amendment. Students in DoDEA schools, just like other students in American public schools, have a right to receive information about the world around them. They have a right to read books about their own experiences or the experiences of people that are different from them, and they have a right to have their education shaped not by animus or politics but by pedagogical expertise, curiosity, and educational rigor.

The American Civil Liberties Union, along with the ACLU of Kentucky and the ACLU of Virginia, filed suit against DoDEA in March on behalf of six families with children in DoDEA schools. These families have children ranging from kindergarten to 11th grade in schools around the world.

We’re arguing that the removals and bans are not based on “rational, age-appropriate, evidence-based concerns” but on politics, and the president’s “anti-wokeness” agenda. This limits students’ ability to think critically, learn about themselves and their neighbors, and in the case of sex ed materials, even keep themselves safe from harm. On Tuesday, the ACLU argued in the Eastern District of Virginia that the court should grant an immediate preliminary injunction to restore curriculum, put books back on the shelf, and prevent DoDEA from continuing to enforce the executive orders that caused all of this.

This battle won’t just be won in the courtroom – student organizers in DoDEA schools have been leading walkouts in protest of these new policies, often risking disciplinary action, since January. In South Korea, 40 students participated in one such walkout, which included a flag folding ceremony and a student dressed as the Statue of Liberty. Military parents, like the ones bringing the lawsuit, have spoken out about how incongruous this spate of censorship is with their jobs: “We make sacrifices as a military family so that my husband can defend the Constitution and the rights and freedoms of all Americans,” said one such parent.

“If our own rights and the rights of our children are at risk, we have a responsibility to speak out.”

This is an excerpt of a piece originally published by Book Riot!.

Four months into President Donald Trump’s second term, he has aggressively pursued efforts to strip entire communities of their rights and circumvent the rule of law.

While many voters expected Trump to ramp up deportations, they did not foresee the hurricane of horrors he has unleashed. The president has attempted to assert war-time authorities to disappear people to foreign prisons without due process based on their tattoos and clothing. He has arbitrarily punished students who are non-citizens, jailing some and forcing others to flee the country. He put U.S. citizen children on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation flights, including those receiving cancer treatment. Trump’s ICE chief has said he wants to create a deportation system like “Amazon Prime for human beings” in a brutal and dehumanizing drive to deport as many people as quickly as possible, no matter the cost. Trump is now poised to turn the military, plus thousands of federal, state and local law enforcement agents, on entire communities in a hunt for our immigrant neighbors that will put all of our civil liberties in danger.

As we prepare for the fight ahead, here are three key areas to watch:

The Trump administration has unlawfully used the Alien Enemies Act --- a wartime authority that had only been invoked three times in over 200 years and only during a declared war—to disappear people to CECOT, a brutal prison in El Salvador, without due process. The administration has shipped immigrants to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. Trump is also attempting to swiftly deport people to dangerous countries to which they have no connection, like South Sudan, which is on the brink of civil war; and Libya, which is known for electrocuting and sexually assaulting migrants imprisoned in militia-run detention facilities. Some of those already deported to CECOT had protected status or pending asylum cases, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father the government admits it sent erroneously, but now refuses any ability or responsibility to return to his family. The ACLU has filed more than 10 habeas corpus, arguing that the government must have a just cause for detaining or imprisoning someone, to stop these illegal deportations without due process.

Trump is reportedly seeking to use National Guard troops for immigration enforcement, opening a very dangerous chapter where troops would be patrolling our neighborhoods looking for families, children, and others who they think are undocumented. We have never experienced a moment like this in our lifetimes, when our troops are being turned against our communities, acting in the service of a military police state.

Within weeks of taking control, the Trump administration initiated a new, nationwide registration system requiring that kids as young as 14 and adults who are non-citizens register. Now, millions of our neighbors and family members face a dangerous Catch-22: If they show up to “register” with ICE, they may be taken into custody and swiftly deported from their homes and families. If they don’t, they face criminal prosecution for failing to register. Any encounter with law enforcement – including when people report a crime or seek protection – could lead to police questioning a person about their immigration and registration status.

At the same time, the Trump administration is also seeking 20,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officers and at least 21,000 National Guard troops to join its deportation force. It is re-assigning thousands of federal law enforcement agents from serious crime investigation duties to immigration enforcement. This is straight out a dystopian novel: The president is amassing a massive internal police force under his command, with a mandate to execute a massive round-up of people in our country, who are cast as “criminals” because they have violated a law that makes failing to turn themselves into the government a crime.

Already, we have seen immigrants deported at airports for criticizing President Trump, and students have their visas revoked for expressing their views. We now know that the State Department is asserting that students and others, like ACLU client Mahmoud Khalil, can be expelled purely for their opinions. The administration is also threatening anyone who helps immigrants to defend their rights, including legal services groups, entire cities and states, and even members of Congress. These attacks are transparently about consolidating power, bringing critics to heel, and eliminating the space to fight back.

Still, there are stories of communities working to support their neighbors and loved ones. Communities are standing up for their neighbors and questioning ICE, and Congress, about abusive arrests and the lack of due process. Law enforcement leaders are declining to take part in the Trump deportation drive, knowing it will not make their communities. Elected officials at all levels are creating a firewall for freedom, enacting protections for their community members that counteract the Trump deportation agenda.

Members of Congress are also listening – and knocking on the doors of private prison operators in New Jersey, Louisiana and Colorado, to name a few. These visits, even when members of Congress are denied entry, are powerful rebukes to an administration claiming power to disappear people into prisons and lock the door behind them.

Courts are rejecting Trump’s authoritarian overreach and affirming that immigrants have rights and deserve due process. It’s no coincidence that some of the more outrageous proposals from this administration—suspending habeas corpus, sending U.S. citizens to CECOT—come when the administration is losing in court.

At the ACLU, working with community partners, through the courts, and through lobbying, our work to protect our communities from Trump’s dangerous deportation drive continues.