Texas: “Residents Sue Llano County Officials, Library Director, Board Members to End Book Bans”

UPDATE July 6, 2022: Library Civil Suit Court Hearing Postponed (via @DailyTrib)

A hearing on motions filed in a civil lawsuit against Llano County officials that was set for Thursday, July 7, has been postponed by agreement of both sides in the case, attorneys for the plaintiffs confirmed.

—End Update—

From the San Antonio Express-News:

A group of local residents are suing Llano County in federal court, alleging that the removal of certain library books for “pornographic content” is really a censorship effort in violation of the first and fourteenth amendments.

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The lawsuit alleges that officials have been “systematically removing award-winning books from library shelves because they disagree with the ideas within them,” and despite policies that prohibits the banning of books because of the “race or nationality or the political or religious views of the writer.”

“The censorship that Defendants have imposed on Llano County public libraries is offensive to the First Amendment and strikes at the core of democracy,” the complaint says. “The right to publish and receive ideas—even politically unpopular ideas or ones that some find offensive or distasteful— is enshrined in our Constitution.”

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More From the Texas Tribune

“Public libraries are not places of government indoctrination. They are not places where the people in power can dictate what their citizens are permitted to read about and learn,” the lawsuit states. “When government actors target public library books because they disagree with and intend to suppress the ideas contained within them, it jeopardizes the freedoms of everyone.”

Plaintiffs’ lawyer Ellen Leonida said she plans to file a preliminary injunction this week to get books back on shelves and access to the digital library distributor, OverDrive, reinstated while the lawsuit is pending. Leonida also wants the lawsuit to serve as a warning that small groups like the one in this case cannot control the availability of books without legal resistance.

“They can’t censor books, unequivocally, based on viewpoints that they disagree with,” Leonida said.

According to the suit, the defendants worked together to remove several children’s books that they found inappropriate from library shelves in early fall of last year. Then, after state Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, notified the Texas Education Agency of a list of 850 books he found objectionable that were found in school libraries, some of the same titles were removed from the Llano libraries.

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Resources

Read the Full Text of the Complaint Filed in the Case (Little v. Llano County (5:22-cv-00400)
31 pages; PDF.

Direct to Case Docket (via Court Listener)

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