LLANO COUNTY, Texas — The ACLU is stepping in to help fight a book ban in a rural Texas county that dates back to 2021.

What You Need To Know

  • The ACLU and the ACLU of Texas filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to “protect the public’s right to access diverse books and ideas at public libraries”

  • Llano County removed 17 books from its libraries with subjects that included racism and transgender issues following complaints from residents who viewed the books as “obscene” and “pornographic.” Eight were returned in June after a decision from an appeals court

  • The ACLU’s brief argues that government officials are prohibited by the First Amendment from removing books if the action suppresses another viewpoint or imposes a political orthodoxy.

Llano County removed 17 books from its libraries with subjects that included racism and transgender issues following complaints from residents who viewed the books as “obscene” and “pornographic.”

On Tuesday, the ACLU and the ACLU of Texas filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to “protect the public’s right to access diverse books and ideas at public libraries.”

ACLU staff attorney Vera Eidelman argues that allowing the removal of books leads to censorship issues.

“If courts allow government officials to pull books out of public libraries in order to impose a government-approved set of views, they're opening a Pandora's box of censorship,” Eidelman said in a statement. “We're urging the Fifth Circuit to recognize that allowing politically-motivated book removals would fundamentally distort the nature and function of public libraries.”

Back in June, eight of those 17 books — which included children’s books and award-winning titles like “They Called Themselves the K.K.K: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group,” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, and “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health,” by Robie Harris —  were returned to shelves after a decision from a divided 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

The ACLU’s brief argues that government officials are prohibited by the First Amendment from removing books if the action suppresses another viewpoint or imposes a political orthodoxy.

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“Government actors may not ‘discriminate invidiously…in such a way as to aim at the suppression of dangerous ideas.’ Nor may they silence ideas in an effort to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion,’” the brief reads.