A small Texas county is weighing whether to shut down its public library system after a federal judge ruled the commissioners violated the constitution by banning a dozen mostly children’s books and ordered that they be put back in circulation.
The Llano County commissioners have scheduled a special meeting for Thursday where the first item on the agenda is whether to “continue or cease operations” at the library.
Leila Green Little, one of the seven local residents who successfully sued the county for banning the books, fired off an email Monday urging county residents to attend the special meeting and give the commissioners an earful.
“We may not get another opportunity to save our library system and, more importantly, the public servants who work there,” Little wrote.
In the message, Little also included a screenshot of a text message that Bonnie Wallace, who is vice-chairman of the Llano County Library Advisory Board, sent to one of her supporters. It was obtained by the seven residents as part of the discovery for the civil suit they filed against the county on April 25, 2022.
It read, in part, “the judge has said, if we lose the injunction, he will CLOSE the library because he WILL NOT put the porn back in the kid’s section!”
Wallace, who did not return a call for comment from NBC News, was referring to Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham, according to Little. The judge also did not return a call from NBC News. It was not immediately clear what books Wallace was describing as “porn.”
The books that Llano County officials removed from the library shelves include Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, the graphic novel “Spinning” by Tillie Walden, and three books from Dawn McMillan’s “I Need a New Butt!” series.
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