Challenge Accepted

The American Library Association receives formal challenges from various private individuals and groups around the country every year, hearing arguments put forth from these sources and debating whether or not to formally acknowledge and accept these arguments, and thus remove certain titles from distribution in public and school libraries around the nation. Many of these challenges are intended to be applied only locally, or only to public school settings, but there have been some shenanigans in the last ten years or so, and a new and unsettling trend has arisen; ideological bias that is both brazen and, oftentimes, results in the petitioner/challenger being browbeaten and publicly scolded for issuing the challenges in the first place.