Texas County Facing Federal Lawsuit Over Banned Books

Citizens decrying censorship have filed a lawsuit against county officials in central Texas they say have trampled on their First Amendment rights by banning books from the local public library.

The lawsuit filed on Monday against officials in Llano County says the plaintiffs have an array of political viewpoints, but are "fiercely united ... in their belief that the government cannot dictate which books they can and cannot read."

Across the United States, more than 1,000 titles, mostly addressing racism and LGBTQ issues, have been removed from school libraries in recent months, according to the writers' organization PEN America. Texas has been at the center of the trend, with Texas state lawmakers and Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, calling on schools to check their libraries for books seen as inappropriate for children.

The Llano county lawsuit described a fierce debate that began last fall with people working off a state lawmaker's list of titles to target county officials with removal requests.

In January, county commissioners voted to dissolve the library board, which resisted banning books. They then "packed the new library board with political appointees", according to the lawsuit. In March, the head librarian at one of the branches was fired after refusing to yank books from shelves.

The office of Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham, a defendant in the lawsuit and the top elected official in the county, declined to comment on the lawsuit. The library board did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit says that among the books removed from Llano County library shelves are "Caste: The Origins of our Discontent" by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson and "They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group" by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.

The lawsuit also says the county terminated access to over 17,000 digital books because it was unable to individually censor certain titles.