Texas county to weigh library closure over book ban fight

(NewsNation) — A fight between residents of a Texas county and its public library over banned books may culminate in the closure of the library altogether.

The Llano County commissioners are scheduled to convene Thursday in a special meeting to discuss whether to “continue or cease operations pending further guidance from the federal courts,” according to the public agenda posted online.

The county and its library system are currently involved in a lawsuit that was filed by seven residents last year after the library pulled more than a dozen books from its shelves, NBC News reported. U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pitman ruled last week that the library must return the books to circulation.

The banned books includes themes of LGBTQ identity and race. They are:

• “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson
• “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
• “Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen” by Jazz Jennings
• “Spinning” by Tillie Walden
• “In the Night Kitchen” by Maurice Sendak
• “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health” by Robbie H. Harris
• “My Butt is So Noisy!” “I Broke My Butt!” and “I Need a New Butt!” by Dawn McMillan
• “Larry the Farting Leprechaun,” “Gary the Goose and His Gas on the Loose,” “Freddie the Farting Snowman” and “Harvey the Heart Has Too Many Farts” by Jane Bexley
• “Shine” by Lauren Myracle
• “Under the Moon: A Catwoman Tale” by Lauren Myracle
• “Gabi, a Girl in Pieces” by Isabel Quintero
• “Freakboy” by Kristin Elizabeth Clark

At least one of the county’s library advisory board members described some of the books’ contents as “porn,” a characterization the residents’ disputed in the lawsuit.

“This is a pretext; none of the books Defendants have targeted is pornographic,” the residents said.

The defendants in the case, who include individual commissioners and library advisory board members, argued that the books were removed as part of a regular “weeding” process, CNN reported. The judge said it was clear there was outside influence in removing the books.

“Whether or not the books in fact qualified for ‘weeding’ under the library’s existing policies, there is no real question that the targeted review was directly prompted by complaints from patrons and county officials over the contents of these titles,” Pitman wrote in his order.

He agreed with the plaintiffs that the removal of the books constituted a violation of the First Amendment.

The plaintiffs “clearly met their burden to show that these are content-based restrictions that are unlikely to pass constitutional muster,” Pitman wrote.

During the Thursday meeting, the commissioners are also also set to discuss the employment of the library system employees.

Shirley Robinson, the executive director of the Texas Library Association, told Texas Public Radio that the potential closure of the library should be a wake-up call for the 21,000 residents of Llano.

“The impact of costing employees their jobs there at the Llano County Library is going to really deprive residents of all sorts of services — not just access to books, but things like how to write a will, how to get a divorce, how to take care of a baby, or get a license, or learn English,” Robinson said.