Maryland State School Superintendent Carey Wright is again using her newly granted authority to delay an action by the Somerset County school board, whose attempts to employ a right-wing agenda in the past year have divided its small, rural community and drawn rebukes by state officials.
For the second time, Wright stopped the Eastern Shore school district from implementing age restrictions on certain school library books until the Maryland State Board of Education decides whether the policy violates state law, a process that could take months. Wright had previously placed a 60-day block on the policy, and she extended that stay this month.
Although books have been removed from school libraries in other Maryland counties, Somerset is the first to adopt a policy that would restrict minors’ access to library books popular with teens.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland and the state’s largest teachers union have called the policy the most extreme of any passed in the state and allege it violated Maryland’s Freedom to Read Act, a 2024 law that prevents school districts from denying students access to literature due to “partisan, ideological or religious disapproval.”
But the policy’s language has created confusion over how it would be applied to certain books.
A local teachers union leader this summer said the policy, which defines “young adults” to exclude those under 18, would limit students’ access to the “Harry Potter” series and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” books the publishing industry often labels as young adult literature. The school board defines young adult as 18.
Somerset’s board members and their attorneys argue the policy is within the bounds of the law and merely seeks to protect children from adult material. They’ve accused the policy’s opponents of spreading misinformation for suggesting well-known classics would be banned.
The controversy follows another in summer 2025 that prompted state officials to intervene in Somerset County and ultimately led them to expand Wright’s authority over local school board actions. Somerset County’s board had dismissed its superintendent, Ava Tasker-Mitchell, in June last year, claiming she’d been insubordinate. Wright reinstated the superintendent for 60 days, the maximum allowed, to give Tasker-Mitchell time to appeal the decision. At the time, Somerset’s board was attempting to hire a new superintendent.
The Maryland State Board of Education then passed an emergency regulation that extended Wright’s authority to stay, or pause, a local school board action from 60 days to the end of any appeal. The move kept Tasker-Mitchell in place until the state board ruled months later, saying she had been fired without due process. She subsequently agreed to leave for a $525,000 buyout.
Now Wright is using that authority again. Days after Somerset’s new book policy passed on Aug. 18, the state superintendent stayed the policy, stopping the school district from implementing it. On Sept. 2, the Somerset Education Association, the Maryland Association of School Librarians and a Somerset County parent jointly filed an appeal asking the state board to overturn the policy, allowing Wright to keep it on pause.
A spokesperson for the state education department declined to comment.
Keeping literature out of teenagers’ hands will limit their understanding of the world and leave them poorly prepared, said Maryland Association of School Librarians President Jacob Gerding. “It’s really shutting them out from a lot of different perspectives, ideas, experiences,” he said.
Somerset’s policy says children should not have access to adult material, including sexually oriented nudity, adult themes and pervasive use of profanity. It says, “Young adults are not minors and books suitable for young adults shall be placed on a separate Young Adults library section to reflect age-appropriate literature.”
The policy defines “young adult” as a person approximately 18 to 23, though the publishing industry says books for young adults are intended for readers 12 to 18 years old. Popular titles often labeled “young adult” include “Little Women,” “Catcher in the Rye,” and “The Diary of a Young Girl,” by Anne Frank.
The board’s attorneys offered a more limited interpretation of the policy than its critics. In a Sept. 14 response to the unions’ appeal, board attorney Marc Schifanelli wrote, “The policy does not call for denial of access to all books with the publishing industry’s marketing moniker ‘young adult.’”
Because the policy’s definition of “young adults” differs from the conventional usage of the term, it’s unclear how librarians would classify and shelve some books marketed as young adult literature.
A line in the policy says “classical literature” with well-known authors should be a priority when educators select books to add to the school system collection, but it does not list which books would be considered classical.
Librarians face potential discipline, the policy says, if materials with adult content that are not educationally suitable for children are found in the section for minors. Opponents say that librarians, fearful of being disciplined, will likely be overly cautious and tend to exclude books from the shelves.
In effect, the policy’s opponents say, books meant for teenagers are off-limits to nearly all students who aren’t in their senior year of high school in the district with the state’s second-lowest English test scores.
Gordana Schifanelli, wife and law partner of Marc Schifanelli, declined interview requests on behalf of board and school system officials.
“We received numerous calls from parents thanking the entire board for protecting students from pornographic materials in schools,” she wrote in an email to The Banner.
At a school board meeting in August, board Chair Matthew Lankford publicly chastised librarian Phaedra Spencer, the county teachers union president, for posting on Facebook in July that “Harry Potter” would be banned under the policy. The post goes on to clarify that the policy cuts off access to young adult books for anyone under 18.
Lankford, who said Spencer had deliberately lied to the public, told the superintendent, David Bromwell, who was sitting nearby, that he wanted disciplinary action. Lankford repeatedly challenged Spencer to identify any board member who proposed banning the books, but he did not say whether minors would be able to access them under the policy.
Spencer responded to Lankford that she did not lie and that the titles were examples of books that would be restricted by the policy. “It was not, ‘These specific books are being banned.’ It even has a question mark. ‘Are these going to be banned?’”
She did not respond to a request for comment.
Gordana Schifanelli wrote in an email to The Banner that the board purchased over 1,071 books the librarian had selected. “And after the board had purchased all the books she selected, she posted deliberately false information on the union site,” she added.
Philomena Polefrone, senior manager at Pen America’s Right to Read, said policies like Somerset’s are often intentionally difficult to understand or confusing. “That leads to people erring on the side of exclusion,” she said.
Polefrone, whose organization advocates for free speech and against censorship of literature, called Somerset’s policy “overly broad and extreme.” In only a few places in the country have such broad policies been passed, she said, including Idaho, where libraries began asking parents for written permission before they would let minors into a library.
Somerset’s “extremist policy attempts to bar student access to age-appropriate books, silence educators from sharing legally protected concerns and shamelessly violates Maryland’s Freedom to Read Act,” Maryland State Education Association Executive Director Sean Johnson said.
The organizations challenging the policy argue in their appeal that it effectively requires librarians to select and separate books based on whether a book’s political or ideological viewpoint is acceptable to the Somerset County Board of Education, in direct violation of the Freedom to Read Act.
Whether Somerset’s policy survives an appeal to the state board won’t be known for weeks, and perhaps months. Both sides are given time to file arguments supporting their cases. The board typically issues opinions at the end of its monthly meetings.
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