Judge orders Harford school board to put banned book back on library shelves

Lawmakers and educators Friday hailed a Harford County Circuit Court judge’s ruling reversing the county school board’s decision to pull a graphic novel from school system library shelves, after a panel of teachers and students had voted to keep it.

The ruling by Circuit Judge Yolanda Curtin was the first legal test of the state’s Freedom to Read Act, a 2024 law that sought to prevent the removal of materials from school libraries because of their authors’ backgrounds or because of “partisan, ideological or religious disapproval.”

Curtin, who ruled from the bench Thursday after a hearing on the dispute, upheld a 2025 decision by the state Board of Education that said the local board was wrong to remove the young-adult graphic novel “Flamer” from school libraries.

Del. Dana Jones (D-Anne Arundel), the lead sponsor of the 2024 law, said Curtin’s ruling shows the law is “doing exactly what it was intended to do: protecting our libraries, librarians, and the fundamental freedom to read.”

“When we passed this landmark law, we made a commitment that books would not be removed from our libraries simply because of partisan, ideological, or religious objections,” Jones said in a statement released by the House speaker’s office. “Parents have every right to make decisions about what their own children read, but no single individual or school board should be able to make that decision for every family.”

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A request for comment from the Harford Board of Education was not immediately returned Friday.

The case involved the county school board’s attempt to remove “Flamer,” Mike Curato’s semi-autobiographical novel about a boy at camp the summer before he enters high school, struggling with his sexuality and his religion, bullying by other boys at camp and thoughts of suicide.

The book was the subject of a complaint from a parent in November 2024 who said that, while she had not read the book in its entirety, she was concerned that the parts she had reviewed did not “meet the values of the community … and plants seeds in the heads of children that not only are trying to find themselves but could also be experiencing mental health challenges.”

The parent worried that the book “does not reveal local resources that may be out there for those struggling
with their identity,” according to state school board documents in the case.

Under the Freedom to Read Act, the county had created a process for reviewing requests for “reconsideration” of library materials. It called for the creation of a nine-member Reconsideration Subcommittee made up of a community member, two parents, two eighth- to 12th grade students, a teacher, an administrator, a librarian and a curriculum specialist.

Committee members are charged with reading the entire work in question and required to “read copies of professionally prepared reviews and list of awards, and review the HCPS Evaluation Procedure before voting whether to retain, move the material to a different level, or remove the material altogether,” according to the state board. That recommendation is sent to the county superintendent, who makes the call.

The committee met in March 2025 and considered the book, which includes “scenes with partial nudity, use of profanity, exploration of sexual identity and homosexuality, instances of bullying, suicidal ideation, and masturbation.” Committee members found those scenes were not excessive and were “contextually appropriate,” and found the overall literary and artistic merits of the book would appeal to students.

The sub-committee ultimately voted to keep “Flamer” in high school libraries, including in schools with middle and high school grades combined. The superintendent accepted the recommendation on May 15, 2025, telling the complaining parent that the book had “literary and artistic merit, educational and community value, and professional recognition” and that, read in its entirety, it had value to the community.

The parent appealed to the Harford County Board of Education.

The board met in private and announced on July 1, 2025, that it had voted 5-3, with one abstention, to reverse the subcommittee and the superintendent and order “Flamer” removed from school libraries. It said school administrators failed to consider the age-appropriateness of the book as well as its “extensive profanity, sexual situations and demeaning observations of females.” The local board said it based its decision “on the pervasive vulgarity and the novels’ absence of educational suitability.”

That decision sparked an appeal to the state board of education by a group of parents, a local advocacy group and the Harford County Education Association. The state board reversed the local board, saying it failed to show that the superintendent’s and the subcommittee’s decisions were improper or did not follow the review procedure required.

“Where the Reconsideration Sub-committee received training and took detailed notes on a book that all members were required to read in full, there is nothing in the record that indicates the local board members even read the book beyond some choice passages, which were not identified,” the state board said in its Nov. 4, 2025, opinion. “Nor did the local board provide any evidence of how the Reconsideration Sub-committee’s review was inconsistent with the Evaluation Procedure.”

The state board’s opinion, in turn, sparked a legal challenge by the local board, which lost Thursday in Curtin’s court.

Sonia Kumar, the senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, called Curtin’s ruling “a victory for the freedom to read.” ACLU of Maryland argued the case.

“This historic decision affirms the promise of Maryland’s Freedom to Read Act and the First Amendment: students deserve access to books that reflect the richness of our experiences, identities, and perspectives, free from censorship,” Kumar said in a statement released Friday by the ACLU of Maryland.