© Reuters. Umer Siddiqui, 18, holds a brochure as he and a group of students discuss “The Bluest Eye” during a meeting of his book club, which reads and discusses books that have been banned in several Texas school districts, in the University Branch Book
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By Evan Garcia and Brad Brooks
LLANO, Texas (Reuters) – Public libraries in a rural Texas county will remain open while a court battle continues over whether local officials can remove books deemed inappropriate, commissioners decided on Thursday.
Commissioners in Llano County, central Texas, held a special meeting to consider closing the three public library branches after a federal judge ruled that banned books should be returned to shelves and no longer censored.
Llano County, with a population of about 22,000 located about 60 miles northwest of Austin, is the latest flashpoint in a battle for books in US libraries.
The four commissioners and judge of the Llano County commissioners court, as the governing body is known, heard from 15 members of the public during a tense meeting before going into executive session. Most of those who spoke wanted libraries to stay open.
“Llano, Texas, wants to be known as the town that closed the public library?” asked resident Lee Nelms. “That would be the death knell for a vibrant community.”
But others said they wanted libraries to close until books they labeled “pornographic” came out. They read aloud explicit sex scenes from the books.
County Judge Ron Cunningham, the county’s top elected official, announced after the executive session that the libraries would remain open, saying “we will try this in court, not through social media or the media.”
He said the books had been returned to the shelves, but he did not say when.
Among the books removed, according to the lawsuit, were “Caste: The Origins of our Discontent” by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson and “They Called Themselves the KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.
According to the writers’ organization PEN America, more than 1,600 titles, mostly on racism and LGBTQ themes, have been pulled from libraries in 32 states in the past year.
No state bans more books than Texas, according to PEN America.
“Public libraries are not meant to serve particular ideological factions,” said Kasey Meehan, who directs PEN America’s “Freedom to Read” project. “They are meant to serve the community.”
Some Llano County citizens in 2021 began calling for the removal of books that were on a Texas Republican legislator’s list of titles that should be banned.
The library board resisted and in 2022 was dissolved by the county commissioners. The commissioners then “filled the new library board with political appointees,” according to the lawsuit.
Judge Robert Pitman of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction on March 30 ordering Llano County to return to library shelves “all print books that were withdrawn due to their point of view.” view or content”. He also ordered that no more books be removed.