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Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the novel by Gregory Maguire that inspired the long-running Broadway musical and film franchise, has been banned from Utah public schools by the Utah State Board of Education.
The decision, made January 5, places Wicked among three titles newly removed from schools statewide, alongside Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult and The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. Since 2024, Utah has pursued large-scale book removals affecting public school students, with 22 additional titles currently in the process of being banned.
Other books under review or already removed include What Girls Are Made Of by Elana K. Arnold, Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur, and Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, the latter of which also served as the basis for a Broadway musical. Many of the challenged works are by authors of color, women, and LGBTQ+ writers.
In response, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Utah on behalf of several authors including Kurt Vonnegut, Arnold, Ellen Hopkins, and Amy Reed as well as two anonymous Utah public high school students. The ACLU argues that the bans violate the First Amendment by disregarding the literary value of age-appropriate books and removing them from public access.
Utah’s Sensitive Materials Law, originally passed in 2022 and amended in 2024, requires schools and libraries to remove books deemed objectionable by the state. Among the titles previously removed are Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and The Bluest Eye by Nobel Prize–winning author Toni Morrison. Other banned works include The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.
Nanette Vonnegut, daughter of Kurt Vonnegut, referenced the landmark Supreme Court case Board of Education, Island Trees School District v. Pico, which ruled against the removal of books from school libraries in 1982. She said that Utah’s actions deny students “the freedom to read, think, and grow.”
Tom Ford, staff attorney at the ACLU of Utah, added that “the right to read and the right to free speech are inseparable,” calling the law unconstitutional censorship.
One of the student plaintiffs stated that removing books from libraries sends a message about whose stories matter, adding that censorship creates a chilling effect on learning and student safety.
