Judge Nixes Censorship

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Staff -- School Library Journal, 11/01/2000

A federal judge in North Texas has struck down a city ordinance that condoned library censorship and has praised a librarian for her role in resisting it. U.S. District Judge Jerry Buchmeyer ruled that a February 1999 ordinance restricting access to controversial books in the Wichita Falls Public Library's children section is unconstitutional. The September 19 decision derailed a petition system that had been enacted last year by the Wichita Falls City Council; it would have limited access to any library title that 300 or more cardholders had petitioned against.

The ruling was in response to an American Civil Liberties Union of Texas lawsuit that was filed after 570 library cardholders signed a petition demanding that two books containing gay characters-Daddy's Roommate (Alyson, 1990) and Heather Has Two Mommies (Alyson, 1990)-be removed from the children's area.

In his statement, Judge Buchmeyer lauded library administrator Linda Hughes as "the real heroine of this unfortunate story of the censorship of two children's books." Last year, Hughes's attempts to keep the two books in the children's section earned her intellectual freedom awards from both the Texas Library Association and the North Texas Regional Library Association. "[The decision] puts the responsibility for censoring children's books on the parents, where it should be," Hughes told the Wichita Falls Times Record News. "I do believe parents should be the ones who determine what books their children read."--Rick Margolis