AUSTIN, Texas — A battle over the removal of books from a public library in the Texas Hill Country drags on.
It’s all linked to a legal battle in 2022 when residents sued Llano County for removing 17 books that included subjects of racism and gender identity from their public library system. Now, advocates are trying to get all those books put back on shelves.
In a new legal brief filed this week, the ACLU says the upcoming hearing will be the first time a federal appeals court will decide what First Amendment standards govern the removal of books from public libraries.
They say they want to protect the public's right to access diverse books and ideas in these spaces. In 2021, Llano County officials ordered the removal of 17 titles from the library over concerns that they were obscene.
Some of those books had themes involving LGBTQ+ and racial topics like Maurice Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen,” “Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson, and Robie H. Harris’ “It’s Perfectly Normal."
Seven residents sued county leaders for restricting books in the public library system. Since then, a federal circuit court ruled that eight of those 17 titles have to be put back on shelves.
An attorney for the ACLU of Texas, Brian Klosterboer, says there's been a wave of book bans and censorship across Texas in schools, but the removals in Llano County were one of the first they'd seen in a public library. He said removing titles simply based on their content goes against the First Amendment.
“It's also very dangerous because they're saying that the government can censor and ban as many books as it wants without any constitutional scrutiny,” Klosterboer said.
According to Klosterboer, libraries have historically been places where different ideas and viewpoints are welcome, but says defendants in the lawsuit are asking the federal appeals court to make public libraries immune from First Amendment claims because the “choice to remove books is government speech."
Klosterboer said it should be up to the community and parents who use public libraries to decide what content should be allowed there.
“When Llano County is trying to ban books in an unlimited way, it's banning books also for adults as well as minors, which is flagrantly unconstitutional," Klosterboer said. "So, we're asking the Fifth Circuit to find that the First Amendment does protect our public libraries and doesn't allow the government to freely censor any viewpoints that they dislike."
Klosterboer said the case has the potential to make it to the U.S. Supreme Court and it could have an impact on book restrictions nationwide.
The hearing is set to take place on Sept. 23 at the Federal Appeals Court in New Orleans.