Law enforcement officers in Hood County are investigating whether school libraries in Granbury Independent School District contain pornography.
The investigation follows a review of 131 books pulled from Granbury ISD library shelves over their supposedly containing age-inappropriate content.
A volunteer review committee ultimately decided to ban five young adult novels for being “sexually explicit.” The other 126 books were allowed to return to Granbury ISD libraries.
However, two committee members disagreed with the majority decision to ban only five books and decided to get law enforcement involved.
Committee members Monica Brown and Karen Lowery filed a misdemeanor complaint on May 2 with the Hood County Constable Precinct 4 Office, alleging “Pornography or Obscene Material” was housed in a high school library.
Hood County Constable Chad Jordan ordered his deputies to investigate following the filing of the complaint.
First Amendment lawyer Adam Steinbaugh told the Dallas Observer that a criminal investigation like this “[sends] the message that librarians should be afraid,” saying “if something is in their collection that other people find offensive, that might not just lead to the book being pulled from the shelves, it might lead to criminal prosecution.”
When accused of trying to get librarians arrested, Brown can be heard qualifying the statement, specifying, “Librarians who expose children to [pornography].”
At a Granbury ISD School Board meeting on May 16, Brown criticized the school board’s plan to include more librarians and district employees on future review committees, countering, “I think you ought to have people of good moral standards.”
She concluded her address by imploring the board, “You have thousands of books. So, what harm is it to let go of some of them?”
Grandbury resident Nancy Worcester also attended the board meeting and spoke out against the book bans.
“There are people in this county so emboldened … that it’s now okay to silently and secretly ban books that we disagree with. Banning books that you disagree with is a cowardly, bullying maneuver,” she said.
Lowery defended herself and Brown against critics like Steinbaugh and Worcester, telling The Texan, “We’re not banning and we’re not burning books. We’re just trying to say, let’s put a boundary on these books.” She continued, “These are totally inappropriate for children. So review them before they go into the library.”
Granbury is not the only city in Texas getting law enforcement involved on reports of pornographic books in schools. Parents in Leander called the police to investigate a book in their child’s school library in 2021.