ACLU Files Suit in Librarian Harry Potter Case

By Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 5/29/2008

Deborah Smith wasn’t one of the librarians working the midnight shift on July 21, 2007, the night Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Scholastic) was officially released to the public.

Now she’s suing her former employer, the Poplar Bluff Library, for religious discrimination. Smith, a Southern Baptist who believes that the Potter books encourage children to worship the occult, claims that after she declined to attend the celebration, where librarians were asked to dress as wizards.

As a result, Smith, a part-time librarian, was penalized with a weeklong suspension, during which time she received no salary.

Jacqueline Thomas, the head librarian at Poplar Bluff Library, declined to comment on the suit, which was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri. But in an earlier response to an Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) document, a city attorney disputed Smith's use of the word "suspension," saying that the librarian was merely given the time off she requested.

"At Ms. Smith's request, she was not scheduled to work the Harry Potter event," the city's response states. "Due to the fact that activities and work schedules were centered around this event, Ms. Smith was not scheduled to work during this week again, due to her request. She was not suspended."

Smith's ACLU attorney Tony Rothert has another reaction. "[Thomas is] lying," he says. Smith "called it a 'suspension,' and she did not ask for the week off. She asked to be excused from just that event.

The lawsuit, filed in district court in Cape Girardeau, alleges that Smith's supervisor violated federal law by refusing to accommodate her "sincerely held religious beliefs," the ACLU says.

Rothert, legal director for the Eastern Missouri ACLU, says Smith's troubles did not end once she returned from her suspension. The librarian has heart problems and a pacemaker, he says, but she was moved from her check-out desk job to one where she shelved books. As a result, she passed out one day. At a doctor's directive, she then quit on September 6, 2007.

Her EEOC complaint followed. Now, her lawsuit is asking for unspecified damages, plus lost pay, the ACLU attorney says. "She would like her job back, if there could be a change of environment, where she felt she could work without her religious beliefs being belittled," Rothert says.

"Otherwise we're asking for lost pay and for them to adopt a policy so that if someone does have a discrimination [complaint] based on religion or another protected category, that [the library] have some sort of grievance procedure."