Town Admits First Amendment Violation After Firing Librarian Who Endorsed Conservative Candidates Opposed to ‘Inappropriate’ Children’s Books
The library and town admitted ‘regret’ for violating the librarian’s ‘constitutional rights.’
A conservative New Hampshire librarian secured a legal victory in a First Amendment dispute with her employer. The Town of Raymond and its Dudley-Tucker Library admitted that they wrongfully terminated librarian Arlene Quaratiello for endorsing, in her private capacity, conservative library trustee candidates opposed to “inappropriate” children’s books.
Quaratiello sued after the library terminated her on April 4, 2023, for endorsing the candidates for library trustee positions at another library, according to Quaratiello’s complaint, filed on October 27, 2023.
Quaratiello, the town, and the library entered into the consent order on June 10, 2024, outlining the town and library’s wrongdoing. The parties agreed that Quaratiello’s termination, despite her reinstatement with backpay on April 25, 2023, violated her constitutional rights.
Four days before the consent order, Quaratiello left her position at the library to pursue teaching at a charter school.
“I am no longer employed at the Dudley-Tucker Library but I left to take a much better job, not to appease my adversaries,” Quaratiello stated in an email to Legal Insurrection, which included a link to her Substack post on the ordeal.
The library admitted that “it regrets its conduct toward Quaratiello and the violation of Plaintiff Quaratiello’s constitutional rights” and agreed to “remind, in writing, all personnel to refrain from engaging in disciplinary activity that punishes the First Amendment activities of employees.”
“We would agree to a comment when the suit is finalized, we receive a copy of the official consent decree, and we are released from liability,” Trustee Chair Jill Galus of the Dudley-Tucker Library told Legal Insurrection.
Galus did not respond to follow-up emails asking whether her office received a copy of the consent order and was willing to comment. The court’s docket shows the case marked “terminated” on June 24.
The consent order requires the library and town to expunge Quaratiello’s record and enjoins them from “disciplining Plaintiff Quaratiello or other similarly situated employees for off-duty political speech and activity.”
The ordeal began when Quaratiello emailed a local Republican Party chapter, urging members to run for library trustee positions. The January 16, 2023, email expresses Quaratiello’s dismay at a “left-leaning display of new books,” including books on transgenderism and gender identity.
The email also criticized the American Library Association for endorsing “woke causes” under the leadership of “a self-described Marxist.”
Quaratiello then wrote a letter to the editor, published on February 27, 2023, that endorsed two library trustee candidates who “believe in protecting our children from the increasing amount of inappropriate material available . . . without sacrificing the intellectual freedom that has always characterized public libraries.”
On April 5, 2023, Quaratiello met with library and city officials, who informed her that she was being terminated from her employment, according to the complaint.
Quaratiello allegedly received “a termination letter at the meeting, dated April 4, 2023, stating, in part, that she was terminated ‘because of [her] lack of separation of personal/political values and agendas from [Dudley-Tucker Library] policies, procedures, and occurrences.'”
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Comments
Unless there is a heavy financial penalty involved this this apology that apology is only worth about as much as the paper it is written on.
🎯If a library in southern Georgia admitted to firing a librarian because she was black or homosexual, would there have been any outcome that didn’t end with both a gigantic financial settlement and national news coverage?
Yeah, “sorry” doesn’t cut it. But these bureaucrats never pay. Even if there was a big financial settlement here, it would just be paid by the town and/or any EPI coverage. Individuals need to be held accountable for their actions in cases like this. Facing personal bankruptcy might make them think twice.
Perhaps Accuracy in Media (AIM) might like to take a little jaunt up that way to show the perps and make the town aware of what they did.
But the penalties always come out of ‘city coffers’ which means the taxpayers pay.
They need to start firing people and revoking their pensions. The BS would cease instantly.
Her in lies an issue with the immunity process, the entire community will be on the hook to pay for the decision made by the people who decided to fire her in the first place. The local entity involved should have recourse against those who fired her including recouping any and all costs involved.
You know, sometimes you can tell a book by its cover.
Good one, boss.
Firing a public employee b/c in their private capacity, on their own time/dime they engaged in political advocacy? Who’s gonna tell them about public employee union activities?
She engaged in heresy, an act strictly forbidden in leftist ideology. No punishment is too great, regardless of the legality of the punishment.
Isn’t that the truth!?
More and more I’m finding the words conservative and sane to be interchangable.
And vice versa. Watch the 1971 movie, The Devils (Oliver Reed opposite Vanessa Redgrave) to see how this played out in 17th century Loudun, France. Pretty grisly.
It breaks my heart to acknowledge it, but really we need to be much more suspicious — routinely — of the adults who find work around children.
Perhaps in the past it made sense to leave our children in the care of complete strangers. All day. Every day. Year after year.
But at this point it feels increasingly WEIRD
Nowadays there are so many many curriculum options available on-line, etc., etc.
Did you catch any of the speech by the president of the NEA? Even 15 seconds is worthwhile — will open your eyes.
I am listening to the speech now. It will be difficult, because it is an speech that will inspire that side. They will be relentless in taking our resources and deciding the futures of our own children, for their own purposes and ideology.
They say they won’t go back. They must be forced back, or dissolved. As she says, public education was never intended to fit her vision. She wants to force transformation, and if it comes to literal war, so be it.
lefty doesnt regret anything
they are soulless ghouls who found their communist agenda and have used it to crush others so that they might feel as miserable as they do
They find “joy” in it. We are the enemies. They spend all their time strategizing ways to use the levers of government to take our resources and even our children.
We’ve got some great real estate and some very smart people here. The system needs refreshing. I can’t even vouch for the vast run of the people. Juries convicted Chauvin and all 3 Arbery defendants of murder, and Trump of made-up felonies. Juries are not supposed to be the servants of the judge or the prosecutors. That’s the morality of Sodom, which was much worse than just homosexuality.
We may simply no longer be worthy of the system given us 200+ years ago.
Why are the library and city officials still employed?
“We would agree to a comment when the suit is finalized, we receive a copy of the official consent decree, and we are released from liability,” Trustee Chair Jill Galus of the Dudley-Tucker Library told Legal Insurrection.”
Hell no, you fucking tyrants. No cucumber sandwich amnesties for you.
PERSONAL fines/reparations, and terminations for ALL involved.
Maybe even some jail time. Preferably in the bulldyke wing.
Most here are familiar with my punitive melody of abolish qualified immunity for politicos, and criminally punish those who aggressively, and egregiously deprive others their plain, enumerated constitutional rights.
Until that happens, the people will continue to be burdened with this perpetual game of wack-a-mole while these politicos shield themselves from responsibilty with tax dollars.
Other conservative outlets need to publish any, and all of this kind of behavior committed by the left to employees.
Remember when queers told us that they “just wanted to live their lives and be left alone.” Now it seems that they want to live their lives right out in front of everyone. Now it seems that they want to live their lives with children sitting on their laps. Perverts, all of ’em.