A case surrounding Llano County’s attempt to remove children’s and young adult books deemed inappropriate from its library was heard in the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this week.
The most recent hearings are the latest step in a case that began in April 2022 over allegations of “book banning” after certain titles deemed inappropriate, explicit, or inaccurate were taken out of the public library by order of the Llano County Commissioners Court.
In total, Llano County removed 17 books that contained material deemed unfit for young children, many covering sexual topics, as reported by The Dallas Express. However, other books removed included controversial texts of debated accuracy on other subjects as well.
Removed books include titles such as Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen, Freakboy, It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing up, Sex and Sexual Health, My Butt is So Noisy!, I Broke My Butt!, And I Need a New Butt!, Larry the Farting Leprechaun, Gary the Goose and His Gas on the Loose, Freddie the Farting Snowman, and Harvey the Heart Has Too Many Farts.
The plaintiffs, a group of seven Llano County residents, claimed that their First Amendment rights were being violated by the removal of books from the library, insisting that taxpayer dollars ought to fund the acquisition of and access to the books.
“Book banning offends basic First Amendment principles and strikes at the core of our democracy,” the plaintiffs alleged. “Each moment that the Plaintiffs are denied their right to access the banned books, they suffer immediate and irreparable harm.”
In March, Judge Robert Pitman of the District Court of Western Texas ruled the county “return all print books that were removed because of their viewpoint or content.”
The decision led the Llano County Commissioners Court to appeal the decision and even consider closing the libraries altogether in order to prevent access to the content, although the court ultimately decided against such a step.
For its part, Llano County has argued that there has been no violation of the First Amendment as no books have been “banned,” and the plaintiffs can easily obtain the books through various other means.
“None of this violates the First Amendment because library patrons remain free to obtain the excluded books from other sources,” Llano County argued. “The plaintiffs’ repeated claims that the defendants have ‘banned’ and ‘censored’ books by declining to make them available in a taxpayer-funded public library are hyperbolic and absurd.”
“The First Amendment does not even require the county to establish a public library, and it certainly does not require the county to use taxpayer resources to make available any book that a library patron might want,” the county added.
The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has not indicated when a decision will be made regarding the case as deliberations are ongoing.
