A small Central Texas county is considering whether to shut down all its public libraries to protest a judge’s ruling.
Tomorrow (Apr. 13), the Commissioners Court of Llano County will convene to discuss, among other things, whether to “continue or cease operations of the current physical Llano County library system pending further guidance from the Federal Courts,” according to the agenda.
The deliberation comes two weeks after a federal judge ordered the county officials to return a dozen books—mostly children’s titles—that they had banned back to the shelves. These books include a book for teens that calls the Ku Klux Klan a terrorist group, Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, and a comedic children’s book with three stories from Dawn McMillan’s I Need a New Butt! series.
Closing libraries in Llano county would affect a relatively small portion of Texas’ citizens. The county with a tiny population of 22,000 only has three libraries—Llano Library, Kingsland Library, and Lakeshore Library—with a workforce of less than a dozen employees. But it’s a cautionary tale; an ominous sign of what’s to come in parts of the country where several other library wars are brewing too. Conservatives are gunning to clear out “critical race theory” and “pornographic” materials from schools.
A non-exhaustive timeline of book ban attempts in Llano, Texas
Summer of 2021: Rochelle Wells, Rhonda Schneider, Gay Baskin, and Bonnie Wallace are part of a group that’s pushing for the removal of children’s books they deem inappropriate. They are all later appointed to a new library board.
October 2021: Republican state lawmaker Matt Krause provides a 16-page list of about 850 book titles to investigate how many are in schools and libraries.
November 2021: Bonnie Wallace, a resident realtor, sent the Llano commissioners an email with the subject line “Pornographic Filth at the Llano Public Libraries,” listing 60 books. Soon thereafter, she’s appointed to the Library Advisory Board.
December 2021: The Llano County Library shuts down for three days so a group of six librarians can conduct a “thorough review” of every children’s book in the library.
April 2022: Seven Llano County residents sue county officials, claiming their First and 14th Amendment rights were violated when books with LGBTQ- and race-related themes were removed from circulation because some people deemed them inappropriate. Llano County judge Ron Cunningham and commissioner Jerry Don Moss are named defendants in the case.
March 2023: US federal judge Robert Pitman in Austin rules that Llano county commissioners violated the constitution by banning a dozen books—mostly children’s titles—and orders them to end the “literary witch hunt,” and put these books back in circulation, including stocking them in the libraries.
One big number: LLano’s library budget
$448,501: Llano’s recently approved 2022-23 operating budget for the library is $448,501 — down from $600,967 in the year prior.
Person of interest: Bonnie Wallace
Bonnie Wallace, the vice-chair of the county Library Advisory Board, is apparently supportive of the possible public library closure. NBC News senior investigative reporter Mike Hixenbaugh published via Twitter a text attributed to Wallace and apparently sent to a fellow activist in February. The text reads: “The judge had said, if we lose the injunction, he will CLOSE the library because he WILL NOT put the porn back into the kid’s section! Very courageous! Keep praying!”
Charted: Texas is the worst state for book bans
Can the Llano library closure be stopped?
The American Library Association, the Authors Guild, and the LGBTQ+ education and advocacy organization PFLAG are all urging people to contact local officials and attend the meeting.
Quotable: Of public libraries and freedom
“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. 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.”—April 2022 Llano county residents’ lawsuit.
Status check: A non-exhaustive list of library wars across the US
💰 Idaho Governor Brad Little vetoed House Bill 314—a legislation that would have allowed the guardian of a child who was able to obtain “harmful” material from a library to claim $2,500 in statutory damages for each instance the material was obtained.
👀 In Arkansas, the Senate Bill 81 has been criticized for threatening fundamental freedoms to read, teach, and learn by setting up pathways for librarians and teachers to be prosecuted for “furnishing a harmful item to a minor.”
📝 The Senate Bill 397 in Oklahoma mandates states libraries in school districts, charter schools, and public libraries do an inventory of print and non-print materials and media, which will be assigned a rating of “elementary,” “junior high,” “under 16,” or “junior and seniors,” depending on the materials contents, starting July 2024. Humans Rights Watch has called it “a curriculum censorship bill that discourages access to books and materials by requiring all school districts, charter schools, and public libraries to conduct an inventory and assign ratings to books in their collection.”
👨⚖️ A similar bill in Indiana would allow a local prosecutor to charge a K-12 school teacher or librarian for giving harmful material to minors, and the educator could not argue in court that the material has educational value.
📚 Michigan House Bill 4136 calls for libraries to organize books by age to keep “obscene” and “sexually explicit” material out of the hands of minors—a task that Debbie Mikula, executive director of the nonprofit organization Michigan Library Association, describes as both unfeasible and unnecessary.
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✊🏿 A celebrated YA novel about Black Lives Matter was pulled from school libraries in Texas