“Banned books” has become a commonplace phrase in recent years. It is prolific within a federal lawsuit filed by a group of seven Llano County library patrons who sued the county, its leadership and several private citizens in 2022. It also occasionally has been used in this newspaper, most recently in a story published earlier this month when the Llano News reported that the lawsuit styled Little v. Llano County could next land at the U.S. Supreme Court.
Since 2021, the News has been covering the book removals within the Llano County Library System as well as the subsequent federal lawsuit that alleges the county's action violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Across dozens of stories through the years, the News generally has referred to the situation with the word “removed.” But in a story last month, the News used the word “banned” rather than “removed” once.
A letter from Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham to the News raised the question of whether a difference exists between a book ban and a book removal. In his letter, Judge Cunningham highlighted a paragraph from U.S. Appellate Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan’s majority opinion issued on May 23, which reversed an earlier decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and sided with the Defendants, including Llano County, which said: “Take a deep breath, everyone. No one is banning (or burning) books. If a disappointed patron can’t find a book in the library, he can order it online, buy it from a bookstore, or borrow it from a friend. All Llano County has done here is what libraries have been doing for two centuries: decide which books they want in their collections. That is what it means to be a library – to make judgments about which books are worth reading and which are not, which ideas belong on the shelves and which do not.”
