The following Statement for Llano County Commissioners Court Special Called Meeting on April 13th was provided by the Llano County Judge's office:
We would like to thank everyone for being here. As we have heard, there are strong proponents for both sides of this situation. As we have stated in the past, Llano County is committed to providing a library system that provides an environment which affords parents the tools to determine what their children have access to in the library. This has and will continue to be about Llano County affording parents the right to protect their children and to decide what material their children may access.
As you all know, Llano County has been entwined in civil litigation since April of 2022. This lawsuit was filed by seven individuals over our librarian’s decision to “weed” 17 books that weren’t being checked out enough to warrant remaining on the shelves. Our librarians weed books all the time, and almost every public library must continually weed books that aren’t being checked out to make room for new books given our limited shelf space.
The plaintiffs have falsely accused our librarian of weeding these books because of their content, even though our librarian has stated repeatedly under oath that she hasn’t even read the books and weeded them for reasons unrelated to their content or viewpoints. We have also fully accommodated the plaintiffs by returning the 17 disputed books to Llano Library and making them available for the plaintiffs to check out and read through the Llano Library’s in-house checkout system. But the plaintiffs continue to sue us, even though we have made every single one of the 17 disputed books available to them for check out.
At present, the cost of this suit to the county is more than $100,000 and growing. Further, the time spent by County employees responding to the excessive discovery demands is over 250 cumulative hours.
This not only includes two days of hearings in federal court in 2022 in Austin, it also includes Llano County diligently working to respond to the Plaintiffs’ requests. We have produced over 4,000 pages in Public Information requests, 12 persons for depositions, over 2,400 pages in discovery, over 14,000 pages in production. We have also provided over 775 emails. We have provided emails that were bate stamped (twice) and yet again without bate stamps and in electronic format upon demand of the plaintiffs.
It is clear that the plaintiffs and their attorneys are determined to run up the costs to the county and its taxpayers as much as possible, even though the 17 books that they are suing over have been available for them to read and check out at Llano Library.
On March 30, 2023, a federal judge in Austin issued a preliminary injunction that compels the county to return not only the 17 disputed books to the shelves, but every book that has ever been removed because of its content or viewpoint. The court also held that the First Amendment prohibits librarians from weeding or removing any book because of the content or viewpoints expressed in that book. The county has appealed this ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
But as we wait for a ruling from the appeals court, a public library simply cannot function if its librarians, county judge, commissioners, and even the volunteers who serve out of the goodness of their heart, can be sued every time a library patron disagrees with a librarian’s weeding decisions. As I mentioned, librarians must continually weed books to make room on library shelves for new materials, and we cannot expose our librarians, county officials, and yes, even those who volunteer to serve on advisory boards with no compensation, to ruinous lawsuits whenever a disgruntled library patron accuses a librarian of weeding a book for content- or viewpoint-based reasons. The judge’s order invites even more expensive litigation by allowing ANY patron to sue over ANY book that has been or will be weeded from the Llano County Library System.
This Order is a clear invitation to the Plaintiffs and any other potential litigant to sue Llano County and any other Texas county or municipality that operates a public library if it follows the weeding process of uncirculated books which is promoted by the state of Texas Library and Archive Commission and endorsed by the American Library Association.
Should Llano County be sued again, the costs will double. With a budget of only $15m, the County will have to make budget cuts to other departments that are statutorily required such as our Court Systems, Road and Bridge, Indigent Care, and the Sheriff’s Department.
The entire budget of the library system is $450,000. As litigation costs and the continued threat of civil litigation continue to grow from law firms in Austin and San Francisco, it will be impossible for the county to operate this purely discretionary county function.
There are many questions surrounding these events. For example, why in 2021 when allegations were made of sexually inappropriate material in the children’s section, none of the news media here today bothered to investigate the allegations? Why is the news media not inquiring as to who is funding this civil litigation on the plaintiffs’ side? Why does some of the media only report minimal information of the 26 page ruling? Why did the plaintiffs, when they knew the 17 disputed books were returned to library and made available for them to check out, nonetheless continue with their demands and civil litigation, creating more cost for the county and its taxpayers?
For reference to “Weeding”:
American Library Association <https://www.ala.org/ala/alalibrary/libraryfactsheet/fact15.htm>
Texas Library Association <https://txla.org/tools-resources/intellectual-freedom/intellectual-freedom-terms-definitions/glossary/>
• Weeding – The systematic removal of resources from a library based on selected criteria. It is the opposite of selecting material, though the selection and deselection of material often involve the same thought process. Weeding is not censorship; it is a vital process for an active collection because it ensures the collection stays current, relevant, and in good condition. Weeding should be done on a continuous, on-going basis. (Larson, Jeanette (2008), CREW: A Weeding Manual for Modern Libraries, Revised and Updated (PDF), Austin, TX: Texas State Library and Archives Commission, retrieved October 7, 2014.) A “well-maintained, well-pruned collection is far more useful than one filled with out-of-date or unused materials.” Lehman, Kathleen (2014), “Collection Development and Management”, Library Resources & Technical Services, 58 (3): 169–177, doi:10.5860/lrts.58n3.169.