LA library boards need to exercise ratified power

Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court and Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, clarity now exists (although perhaps requiring a confirmatory future Court opinion) for Louisiana library boards of control in what they can regulate as content in their parish libraries. It’s now up to them to act.

This week, the Court denied a hearing of Little v. Llano Co., ratifying the Fifth Circuit’s ruling. Llano County’s (TX) library commission had removed several books from circulation that it found unworthy of backing with public dollars, prompting a few aggrieved residents to sue on First Amendment grounds.

The Fifth Circuit made quick work of that ridiculous argument. It said the amendment had no historical and intended basis of giving an individual the right to demand that taxpayer dollars be spent on or the judgment of public servants conform to putting into circulation a certain book. If people in a jurisdiction wanted a different outcome, they should elect officials that, in exercising the power of their offices or in delegation of those, who would select those books.

It further scoffed at the idea that a duly-authorized government official or panel of them by having the power to decide what was or was not in a library was orchestrating a “ban” on books. The court pointed out that any such book would be available freely from many other nongovernment sources, or even other government-backed ones.

This produced an incredible amount of intellect-free hyperventilation about the outcome buttressed with prime examples of poor critical thinking abilities. One stated the decision was “undermining the First Amendment right to read unfettered by viewpoint-based censorship,” as if a government would now send monitors into public and private spaces to try to catch people reading books off a mythical banned list, while another committed the same error in saying “The government has no place telling people what they can and cannot read.”

Obviously, the decision causes nothing of the sort and begs for a serious reality check visited upon such nimrods. A trip to Cuba, North Korea, and a few other places not only would give them some perspective on what’s like not only to encounter a society where the government does ban books but also what kind of severe penalties they impose upon those who get ahold of an illegal text.

Even more pitiable is the extreme hypocrisy behind these bleats. Where were these guardians of the First Amendment when publishers were disowning their own products and sellers were refusing to distribute books challenging leftism’s zeitgeist, which is much more of a ban than the government deciding what public libraries should carry.

Regardless, with this power confirmed, in Louisiana its library boards of control now may exercise it. State law already explicitly gives them the ability to segregate books that children may read with parental permission, but doesn’t address other matters. Boards should begin an immediate review of their catalogs and determine whether books in it don’t merit the use of tax dollars in maintaining shelf placement and staff resources dealing with them.

In some jurisdictions, plenty of controversy already has occurred over fulfilling the law regarding minors’ access in multiple locations. That may discourage some boards from undertaking such a review, but it shouldn’t, and if they balk their governing bodies should begin appointing members who don’t. But it should be done.