How about just a little excellent news?
A Wyoming librarian has been awarded a $700,000 settlement after she was fired for refusing to take LGBTQ books off the cabinets in Campbell County. It’s a win for banned books, the First Modification, LGBTQ supporters, and libraries.
In 2023, Terri Lesley was fired from her job of library system director in Campbell County, Wyoming, after 27 years on the job. Whereas those that fired her mentioned it was for efficiency points, the choice got here amid a battle over LGBTQ library books that some wished banned from the library system. Lesley stood her floor and was terminated the day after refusing to bodily take the books off the cabinets.
Final spring, she sued the county, the fee, and the library board for violating her First Modification rights — and this week, a federal choose sided along with her.
“I do really feel vindicated. It has been a tough highway, however I’ll by no means remorse standing up for the First Modification,” Lesley told Wyoming Public Radio.
Lesley mentioned that eradicating the books was censorship and discrimination, which might have opened the county as much as lawsuits.
“We hope at the very least that it sends a message to different library districts, different states, different counties, that the First Modification is alive and robust and that our values in opposition to discrimination additionally stay alive and robust,” said Lesley’s attorney, Iris Halpern. “These are public entities, they’re authorities officers, they want to remember their constitutional obligations.”
Halpern and her agency, Rathod Mohamedbhai in Denver, have a historical past of doing authorized work for fired librarians in our present period of e-book banning. In fact, e-book banning efforts have reached a record high over the previous 4 years.
“I’ve by no means seen something like this,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, ALA’s Director of Workplace for Mental Freedom, advised the Related Press. “The final two years have been exhausting, scary, outrage inducing.”
Here’s Scary Mommy’s guide to fighting book ban in your community.
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