The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by a group of Texas county residents challenging their local library’s removal of LGBTQ and other controversial books from its bookshelves.
Yesterday, the Court denied the groups’ petition to review the case, letting stand the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ earlier dismissal of their free speech claims against the so-called “book bans.”
We covered the case, Little v. Llano County, here:
Federal Appeals Court Tosses “Book Ban” Challenge, Library May Remove Books Based on Content
To recap briefly, the conflict between county residents and library officials began in 2021, when, responding to public complaints, the Llano County library removed 17 controversial books from its shelves, including these children’s books: Freakboy; Freddy the Farting Snowman; and Being Jazz: My Life As a Transgender Teen. A group of patrons then sued, alleging the library had illegally banned the books.
At first, the case was going the plaintiffs’ way. In 2023, the federal district court sided with the patrons, ruling the library violated their right to receive information under the Free Speech Clause and ordering the books to be put back on the shelves. Last year, a divided panel of the Fifth Circuit Court agreed.
On appeal, however, a full panel of the Fifth Circuit ruled 10-7 that there is “no such right” under the First Amendment: “It is one thing to tell the government it cannot stop you from receiving a book,” Judge Stuart Duncan, a Trump appointee, wrote on behalf of the panel. “The First Amendment protects your right to do that.” “It is another thing for you to tell the government which books it must keep in the library. The First Amendment does not give you the right to demand that.”
The court also held that the library’s book selections are government speech, similar to a city museum’s selection of which paintings to feature in an exhibit—and therefore not subject to a Free Speech challenge.
The library patrons then petitioned the Supreme Court to intervene and reverse the appellate court’s decision “immunizing” viewpoint discrimination in violation of their First Amendment rights.
Now, in denying their bid to review the case, the Court leaves in place the rule in the Fifth Circuit, that the First Amendment can’t be invoked to challenge a library’s decision “about which books to buy, which books to keep, or which books to remove.”
As Judge Duncan put it when he told everyone to “take a deep breath”: “No one is banning (or burning) books. If a disappointed patron can’t find a book in the library, he can order it online, buy it from a bookstore, or borrow it from a friend.”
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