And most of the controversy involves school libraries - although there are some exceptions.
This bill just doesn’t do much. I’m not opposed to it. I guess it might do a little good.
But it’s posturing by politicians.
This is splitting hairs: removing books from school libraries is a de facto ban on those books. Neither the article nor law implies that "book ban" in this context means anything other than "school book ban."
No, it isn't. There are millions of books that aren't in school libraries. Are they all de facto banned?
Confidently declaring something doesn't make it true. A library deciding not to carry a book is not a book ban.
Never having a book, having it but having it be removed for non-content-related reasons, having it removed for content-related reasons, having the content removal decision come from librarians, or parents, or politicians, the public record of comments about why something is removed, all of these things are obviously important. Flattening it to "yeah lots of books aren't in libraries" is a _bit_ reductive!
Good things are good, bad things are bad. Sometimes it's hard to write laws that work around this, but at the very least moral judgements can be made, with space for nuance.
There’s a big difference between saying “we don’t think Tropic of Cancer is appropriate for high school kids so we’re going to remove it” and “Tropic of Cancer is banned in our schools”.
The “book bans” happening are mostly the former and while I do think they’re mostly stupid, they’re nowhere near what you’d think is happening from headlines. Very little actual banning is occurring.