[citation needed] ABFFE was active in a five-year campaign to restore reader privacy safeguards affected by the USA PATRIOT Act.
[9] In 2022, the ABFE was part of a coalition of booksellers' organizations which brought a lawsuit against the state of Texas challenging a new censorship law called the Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources (READER) Act which would have imposed a restrictive content-based rating system on books sold to school libraries in the state.
[11] In July 2022, the ACLU brought forward a motion to dismiss in Virginia on behalf of the ABFE and other organizations, in response to a lawsuit which argued that Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe and A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas are obscene and therefore sales of the book should be restricted.
[13] American Booksellers for Free Expression is a sponsor of the annual Banned Books Week event in the United States.
[16] The event's organizers and sponsors aim to raise awareness and promote discussions about the importance of open access to diverse ideas and perspectives in literature.
[21] In 2023, the ABFE published The ABA Right to Read Toolkit: How Booksellers and Readers Can Resist Book Bans.