North Little Rock School District’s restoration of access to 50 books on Epic! turns on a procedural point: no formal complaint had been filed against those titles. An Oct. 23 memo allowed teachers to make the books available again after administrators reviewed a revised library materials policy and a district committee recommended restoring access, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. District spokesman Dustin Barnes cited community input in explaining the policy revision, the newspaper reported.
What the cited laws do—and do not establish
Arkansas Act 372 requires school media centers to have a process for challenges to material. It also says challenged material cannot be withdrawn solely because of its viewpoints and must be reviewed in full, according to the 2023 law. Separately, Act 237 restricts public school teachers from providing classroom instruction on specified topics, including sexual orientation and gender identity, before fifth grade, according to the LEARNS Act provision. That classroom-instruction rule does not by itself determine whether the district could restrict access to titles on a digital reading platform.
The titles had been hidden from students at North Little Rock’s eight elementary schools during 2025. The Democrat-Gazette reported that administrators had directed school staff to block them on Epic!, a platform offering books and videos to elementary and middle school students. A UALR Public Radio account of the earlier removal described more than 50 books being pulled from the app, while the restoration report specifies 50. The accounts do not reconcile the difference.
Parents and an advocacy group disagree over the reversal
John Lemmon, fundraising chairman for the Lakewood Elementary School PTA and father of a third grader, told the Democrat-Gazette that he spent much of a year emailing administrators and attending school board meetings to press for access to be restored. He argued that the LEARNS Act provision administrators cited concerned classroom instruction, not the digital library, and questioned whether a committee had read the restricted books in full. He welcomed the reversal but worried that a future formal challenge could lead to renewed restrictions, the newspaper reported.
Lisa Stine, a Lakewood Elementary parent, told the newspaper she did not consider the books obscene and objected to restricting access to books about a marginalized group. Jerry Cox, president of the Arkansas Family Council, opposed the restoration and argued that it could violate state law. Both positions were reported by the Democrat-Gazette; they do not resolve how the laws apply to Epic!.
Similar disputes and national figures
The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom counted 4,235 unique titles challenged in 2025, the second-highest annual total it has documented. Of those titles, 1,671, or 39%, represented the lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ people and people of color. The association also recorded 713 attempts to censor library materials and services, 487 of them targeting books. It said pressure groups, government officials and decision-makers initiated 92% of book challenges that year, compared with 72% in 2024, while less than 3% originated with individual parents. The ALA cautions that its figures are a snapshot because many challenges are not reported to it or covered by the press, according to its book-challenge data.
Other Arkansas districts have faced challenges over books involving LGBTQ+ characters. In Benton, a parent’s challenge to a novel led school staff to decide that it did not meet selection criteria and should be moved from the library, according to the Arkansas Times. In the Mountain Pine School District, nine LGBTQ+-related titles were restricted for students in grades 2 through 5 and made available only with written parental permission, the Arkansas Advocate reported.
A separate library dispute in Saline County ended with former library director Patty Hector receiving $225,000 in a settlement after suing the county and county judge over her termination, according to the Arkansas Advocate. The Democrat-Gazette also reported the settlement in its coverage of North Little Rock’s decision.
