The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge against a small Central Texas county’s removal of 17 books from its public libraries, including some that focus on race and gender.
The Monday move by the high court lets stand the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling that says the First Amendment doesn’t acknowledge a right to receive information. It is also a major blow to the yearslong legal fight led by seven Llano County residents against what they have called a coordinated censorship campaign by the county government, amid a broader wave of book bans in Texas.
Attorneys for the library patrons and the county didn’t immediately respond to comment requests from The Texas Tribune.
PEN America, a nonprofit that tracks book bans throughout the country which filed a brief in support of the residents, blasted the rejection in a news release.
“Leaving the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in place erodes the most elemental principles of free speech and allows state and local governments to exert ideological control over the people with impunity,” said Elly Brinkley, staff attorney for the group’s U.S. Free Expression Programs. “The government has no place telling people what they can and cannot read.”
Bob Corn-Revere, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s chief counsel, also said this was a missed opportunity for the Supreme Court to clarify public libraries’ constitutional status.
“Because it failed to do so, we will face a period of uncertainty as appellate courts in different parts of the country apply different standards governing the freedom to read,” he said in a statement.
See here, here, and here for the background. There was an en banc hearing at the Fifth Circuit along the way, with the original district court ruling against Llano County being overturned by a 10-7 margin. I recommend again that you read this thread by appellate lawyer Raffi Melkonian, as there is some nuance here. You want to allow a library to respond to a request to remove a book with racist images on its cover, for example. But you also want some rules on how heavy-handed a library can be, and this ruling more or less gives people driven by ideology some wide latitude. Nothing good will come of that.