libraries

May 24 (UPI) — A Texas public library did not violate patrons’ right to free speech by removing books due to their content, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled on Friday.

The entire appellate court, in a 10-7 decision, overturned federal district court and appellate court rulings finding the Llano County (Texas) Library System erred in removing 17 books due to their content.

The courts initially ruled that library officials violated plaintiffs’ right to receive information under the Constitution’s Free Speech Clause by removing the books and ordered that they be returned to the library’s shelves.

The plaintiffs are seven library patrons who in 2022 filed a lawsuit challenging the removal of 17 books due to their “content on race, gender and sexuality as well as some children’s books that contained nudity,” the Austin American-Statesman reported.

A federal district court and a three-judge appellate court panel each ruled against the library.

The Fifth Circuit appellate court’s en banc panel on Friday reversed the prior court decisions and dismissed the free speech claims against the Lloyd County Library System for two reasons.

No right to receive information

“Plaintiffs cannot invoke a right to receive information to challenge a library’s removal of books,” Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan wrote in the majority decision.

“Supreme Court precedent sometimes protects one’s right to receive someone else’s speech,” Duncan continued.

“Plaintiffs would transform that precedent into a brave new right to receive information from the government in the form of taxpayer-funded library books,” he said. “The First Amendment acknowledges no such right.”

Instead, a patron could order a book online, buy it from a bookstore or borrow it from a friend, Duncan wrote.

“All Llano County has done here is what libraries have been doing for two centuries: decide which books they want in their collection,” he said.

Such decisions are very subjective, and it’s impossible to find widespread agreement on a standard to determine which books should or should not be made available, the majority ruling says.

“May a library remove a book because it dislikes its ideas? Because it finds the book vulgar? Sexist? Inaccurate? Outdated? Poorly written?” Duncan wrote. “Heaven knows.”

The plaintiffs “took the baffling view that libraries cannot even remove books that espouse racism,” Duncan added.

Public library collections are ‘government speech’

The majority decision also ruled that the library’s collection decisions are government speech and not subject to First Amendment-based free speech challenges.

Duncan said many precedents affirm that “curating and presenting a collection of third-party speech” is an “expressive activity.”

Examples include editors choosing which stories to publish, television stations choosing which programs to air and museum officials deciding what to feature in exhibits.

“In the same way, a library expresses itself by deciding how to shape its collection,” Duncan wrote.

He cited another court’s ruling that said governments speak through public libraries by selecting which books to make available and which ones to exclude.

“From the moment they emerged in the 19th century, public libraries have shaped their collections to present what they held to be worthwhile literature,” Duncan said.

“Libraries curate their collections for expressive purposes,” he said. “Their collection decisions are, therefore, government speech.”

He called arguments made in the case “over-caffeinated” and said plaintiffs warned of “book bans,” “pyres of burned books,” and “totalitarian regimes.”

“Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people,” one brief filed by plaintiffs claimed, according to Duncan.

“Take a deep breath, everyone. No one is banning (or burning) books,” he said.

Won’t ‘join the book burners’

Judge Stephen Higginson was joined by six others in a lengthy dissenting opinion.

The Supreme Court in prior rulings affirmed the right to receive information and the right to be “free from officially prescribed orthodoxy,” Higginson said.

“Public libraries have long kept the people well informed by giving them access to works expressing a broad range of information and ideas,” Higginson wrote.

“But this case concerns the politically motivated removal of books from the Llano County Public Library system by government officials in order to deny public access to disfavored ideas,” he said.

The majority “forsakes core First Amendment principles and controlling Supreme Court law,” he wrote.

“Because I would not have our court ‘join the book burners,'” Higginson said, “I dissent.”

Libraries across the United States are cutting back on ebooks, audiobooks and loan programs after the Trump administration suspended millions of dollars in federal grants as it tries to dissolve the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Federal judges have issued temporary orders to block the Trump administration from taking any further steps toward gutting the agency. But the unexpected slashing of grants has delivered a significant blow to many libraries, which are reshuffling budgets and looking at different ways to raise money.

Maine has laid off a fifth of its staff and temporarily closed its state library after not receiving the remainder of its annual funding. Libraries in Mississippi have indefinitely stopped offering a popular ebook service, and the South Dakota state library has suspended its interlibrary loan program.

Ebook and audiobook programs are especially vulnerable to budget cuts, even though those offerings have exploded in popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think everyone should know the cost of providing digital sources is too expensive for most libraries,” said Cindy Hohl, president of the American Library Assn. “It’s a continuous and growing need.”

Library officials caught off guard by Trump’s cuts

President Trump issued an executive order March 14 to dismantle the IMLS before firing nearly all of its employees.

One month later, the Maine State Library announced it was issuing layoff notices for workers funded through an IMLS grant program.

“It came as quite a surprise to all of us,” said Spencer Davis, a library generalist at the Maine State Library who is one of eight employees who were laid off May 8 because of the suspended funding.

In April, California, Washington and Connecticut were the only three states to receive letters stating the remainder of their funding for the year was canceled, Hohl said. For others, the money hasn’t been distributed yet. The three states all filed formal objections with the IMLS.

Rebecca Wendt, California state library director, said she was never told why California’s funding was terminated while the other remaining states did not receive the same notice.

“We are mystified,” Wendt said.

The agency did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Popular digital offerings on the chopping block

Most libraries are funded by city and county governments, but receive a smaller portion of their budget from their state libraries, which receive federal dollars every year to help pay for summer reading programs, interlibrary loan services and digital books. Libraries in rural areas rely on federal grants more than those in cities.

Many states use the funding to pay for ebooks and audiobooks, which are increasingly popular, and costly, offerings. In 2023, more than 660 million people globally borrowed ebooks, audiobooks and digital magazines, up from 19% in 2022, according to OverDrive, the main distributor of digital content for libraries and schools.

In Mississippi, the state library helped fund its statewide ebook program.

For a few days, Erin Busbea was the bearer of bad news for readers at her Mississippi library: Hoopla, a popular app to check out ebooks and audiobooks, had been suspended indefinitely in Lowndes and DeSoto counties due to the funding freeze.

“People have been calling and asking, ‘Why can’t I access my books on Hoopla?’” said Busbea, library director of the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library System in Columbus, a majority-Black city northeast of Jackson.

The library system also had to pause parts of its interlibrary loan system allowing readers to borrow books from other states when they aren’t available locally.

“For most libraries that were using federal dollars, they had to curtail those activities,” said Hulen Bivins, the Mississippi Library Commission executive director.

States are fighting the funding freeze

The funding freeze came after the agency’s roughly 70 staff members were placed on administrative leave in March.

Attorneys general in 21 states and the American Library Assn. have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration for seeking to dismantle the agency.

The institute’s annual budget is below $300 million and distributes less than half of that to state libraries across the country. In California, the state library was notified that about 20%, or $3 million, of its $15-million grant had been terminated.

“The small library systems are not able to pay for the ebooks themselves,” said Wendt, the California state librarian.

In South Dakota, the state’s interlibrary loan program is on hold, according to Nancy Van Der Weide, a spokesperson for the South Dakota Department of Education.

The institute, founded in 1996 by a Republican-controlled Congress, also supports a national library training program named after former first lady Laura Bush that seeks to recruit and train librarians from diverse or underrepresented backgrounds. A spokesperson for Bush did not return a request seeking comment.

“Library funding is never robust. It’s always a point of discussion. It’s always something you need to advocate for,” said Liz Doucett, library director at Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick, Maine. “It’s adding to just general anxiety.”

Lathan writes for the Associated Press.