Public schools in the US state of Utah have enacted a permanent ban on Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. The decision forms part of a wider statewide effort to remove materials deemed inappropriate under recently amended legislation.
The Statewide Ban and Its Legal Basis
The dark fantasy novel, which reimagines L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the Wicked Witch, was added to the Utah State Board of Education's list of banned books on Monday, 11 January 2026. It joins dozens of other titles, including Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes.
The move is a direct application of Utah's Sensitive Materials Law. This law was first passed in 2022 and later amended in 2024 with the explicit purpose of helping schools "identify and remove pornographic or indecent material." The ban on Wicked was triggered after three local school districts—Davis County, Tooele County, and Washington County—independently determined the book contained "objective sensitive materials," leading to the statewide prohibition.
Author's Admission and Legal Challenges
Notably, author Gregory Maguire has previously distanced his novel from the family-friendly Wicked musical and films. In a November 2024 interview with MassLive, he admitted his book is "completely not for children." He explained that he "purposefully put somewhat raunchy material in the first few pages of Wicked, the novel, to show what people were getting into."
This wave of book banning in Utah is now facing significant legal opposition. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Utah filed a lawsuit earlier this week on behalf of authors Elana K. Arnold, Ellen Hopkins, and Amy Reed, as well as the estate of Kurt Vonnegut. They argue the state's actions violate the First Amendment right to free speech.
"The right to read and the right to free speech are inseparable," stated Tom Ford, an attorney for the ACLU of Utah. "The First Amendment protects our freedom to read, learn, and share ideas free from unconstitutional censorship."
A National Context for School Censorship
The situation in Utah reflects a broader national trend of increasing book challenges in American schools. The literary and free expression advocacy group PEN America has been tracking such bans since at least 2021. According to their Index of School Book Bans for the 2024-2025 period, there were a staggering more than 6,700 instances of book bans across school districts nationwide.
The Independent has contacted both Gregory Maguire and the Utah State Board of Education for further comment on the permanent removal of Wicked from school shelves.
