Showing posts with label Little v. Llano County. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Little v. Llano County. Show all posts

Sunday, May 25, 2025

The "right to receive information"

From: ALA

 

By Gretchen Garrity

The American Library Association and their comrades in the education, publishing and political institutions have suffered a setback in the Library Wars. 

The United State Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has decided the case of Little v. Llano County.

In its introduction, the court laid out the case:

"Patrons of a county library in Texas sued the librarian and other officials, alleging they removed 17 books because of their treatment of racial and sexual themes. The district court ruled that defendants abridged plaintiffs’ “right to receive information” under the Free Speech Clause and ordered the books returned to the shelves. On appeal, a divided panel of our court affirmed in part. We granted en banc rehearing."

En banc means the whole court, rather than a smaller panel, heard the case. In their decision, the Court held:

"We now reverse the preliminary injunction and render judgment dismissing the Free Speech claims. We do so for two separate reasons.

First, plaintiffs cannot invoke a right to receive information to challenge a library's removal of books. Yes, Supreme Court precedent sometimes protects one's right to receive someone else's speech. But plaintiffs would transform that precedent into a brave new right to receive information from the government in the form of taxpayer-funded library books. The First Amendment acknowledges no such right."

Further, the Court stated:

"The only sensible course—and, happily, the one supported by reams of precedent—is to hold that the right to receive information does not apply here. A plaintiff may not invoke that right to challenge a library's decisions about which books to buy, which books to keep, or which books to remove."

And then there is this:

"Finally, we note with amusement (and some dismay) the unusually over-caffeinated arguments made in this case. Judging from the rhetoric in the briefs, one would think Llano County had planned to stage a book burning in front of the library. Plaintiffs and amici warn of “book bans,” “pyres of burned books,” “totalitarian regimes,” and the “ Index librorum prohibitorum.” One amicus intones: “Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people.”

"Over-caffeinated arguments." LOL. Thank goodness the court took notice of the nutty rhetoric that has been floated for ever so long now. The revolutionary stridency, the bosom-heaving self-righteousness of the activists, was disposed of in the Court's decision.

Reason has an article about the decision HERE. They have a followup HERE. And Bloomberg Law covers the decision HERE.

The decision is not without controversy, and some of the judges issued a dissent. However, it seems we are seeing a return to a more traditional interpretation of the First Amendment, rather than the "brave new right" that the ALA has been pushing for years. Most likely, this or another such case will find its way to the Supreme Court.

It was noted that if individuals or groups have a First Amendment right to "receive information," aka force public libraries to keep certain books, then there is a similar First Amendment "right" to compel public libraries to add certain books, as well. One can see the tension.

And, it must be said, a public library is only as good as those who are curating the collection--which makes it very important for citizens to know who is adding which books to its collection, and how those books are being classified and shelved.

And, just for nice, more common sense:

Finishing up with WLA's Dan Kleinman who tweets about how Book Riot (comrades of ALA) is promoting Pride Month in June. There's a plethora of information in the thread, and Dan pulls no punches. He has been at this fight for over two decades. He knows the stakes:

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