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Llano County, Texas, would rather have no libraries at all than allow books about gay people and racism to be on their shelves, after an order by a federal judge.
The Llano County Library System, which has three libraries, replaced the elected members of their library board in 2021 with an board appointed by the Republican county commissioners. They immediately began a comprehensive review of the libraries’ catalog. Early in 2022, the new board removed a few dozen books early last year because commissioners deemed them ‘inappropriate’ to be available to the public. Seven residents sued county officials for the books to be returned in April 2022. Their lawsuits, on the basis that it was a violation of their First and 14th Amendment rights to censor libraries in that manner, went to a circuit court, where the defendants declined to appear.
On March 30th, Judge Robert Pitman ruled that the plaintiffs were correct. Libraries are allowed to remove books from their shelves, but only for ‘weeding’ purposes, removing books in poor shape or which are not checked out for long periods of time to make room for new content. They are not, under the First Amendment, allowed to remove books based on content discrimination.
The libraries were given 24 hours to return the 12 books named in the lawsuit, most of them books aimed at teenagers about being LGBT or about racism, back to the shelves.
That was on March 30. This Thursday, April 13th, the Commissioners Court of Llano County will discuss whether to “continue or cease operations of the current physical Llano County library system pending further guidance from the Federal Courts,” according to their published meeting agenda.
“It appears that the defendants would rather shut down the Library System entirely — depriving thousands of Llano county residents of access to books, learning resources, and meeting space — than make the banned books available to residents who want to read them,” Ellen Leonida, attorney for plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement to CNN.
The American Libraries Association has uncatalogued over 1200 demands to censor library books in 2022, more than twice any previous year.
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