Something bad is happening in Utah.

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the Gregory Maguire novel that inspired the hit musical and film franchise, is the newest book to be banned by the Utah State Board of Education. 

Since 2024, Utah has engaged in wide scale book banning for its public school students, with 22 books in process of being removed from school library shelves by the Utah State Board of Education. Wicked is one of three books to be banned by the state January 5, alongside Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, and The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. 

Other books that are on the list include Elana K. Arnold's What Girls Are Made Of, Rupi Kaur's Milk and Honey, Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants (the basis for the Broadway musical of the same name), and more. For a complete list of the in-process banned titles, go here.

In response to the bans, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Utah on behalf of authors Kurt Vonnegut, Arnold, Ellen Hopkins, Amy Reed, and two anonymous Utah public high school students. As the ACLU puts it, "by disregarding the literary value of age-appropriate books and removing them, Utah is trampling on the protections guaranteed by the First Amendment."

Utah’s Sensitive Materials Law, originally passed in 2022 and then amended in 2024, requires public schools and their libraries to remove a large range of literature at the whim of the state legislature. Among the books initially removed are Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Many of the banned titles target voices that have historically been silenced, including authors of color, women, and LGBTQ+ writers. These removals include Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner (the basis for a Broadway play) and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Maguire, a self-described "quiet political activist and advocate for children and their books," is expected to comment on the case.

“In 1975, my father Kurt Vonnegut’s book Slaughterhouse-Five was among 11 books removed from library shelves in a New York school district, leading to a landmark victory in the U.S. Supreme Court case Board of Education, Island Trees School District v. Pico,” said Nanette Vonnegut, daughter of author Kurt Vonnegut. “He regarded libraries and librarians as our most vital public institutions because ‘words are the most powerful tools we have.’ Now, more than half a century later, Utah’s lawmakers’ determination to ban books like Slaughterhouse-Five denies innumerable young people in Utah the freedom to read, think, and grow; it is antithetical to what my father fought for during World War II and focused much of his literary legacy on addressing.”

Added Tom Ford, staff attorney at the ACLU of Utah: "The right to read and the right to free speech are inseparable. The First Amendment protects our freedom to read, learn, and share ideas free from unconstitutional censorship. This law censors constitutionally protected books, silences authors, and denies students access to ideas, in violation of the First Amendment rights of students and authors alike, and must be struck down.”

“For many Utah students, the first place we recognize our own lives and identities is in a library book. When those books disappear, students notice immediately. It sends a clear message about whose stories matter and whose do not,” said one of the student plaintiffs. “Book bans do more harm than simply removing stories. Empty shelves cost us understanding and connection, turning schools from places of learning into systems of control. Censorship does not just make ideas disappear, but also makes schools more confusing and dangerous because of its chilling effect on our right to learn."

For the full text of the lawsuit, visit ACLUutah.org