Is Library Book-Buying “Government Speech”

Tomorrow (Wednesday, December 10th, from 6-7:30pm), I’ll be a panelist for the Youth Literature Censorship Forum, at Bethlehem Area Public Library (BAPL). My co-panelists will be fellow book-banning opponents, Jordan Sonnenblick, acclaimed children’s book author and Pennsylvania co-chair of Authors Against Book Bans, and Maria Gerasklis, BAPL Head of Youth Services, and past library director in Berks County, where she had career-changing run-ins with book-banners. Our discussion will be moderated by (and was organized by) BAPL staff member Matt Wolf. The program’s title will be the same as my book’s: “You’re Telling My Kids They Can’t Read This Book?”

[12/10/25 EDIT: THE PROGRAM WAS POSTPONED DUE TO A SNOWSTORM, UNTIL 2026]

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Yesterday, Monday, December 8th, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) declined to review a decision of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, serving Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. In letting this decision stand, SCOTUS endorsed government public-library book-removals in Llano County, Texas. A Publishers Weekly (PW) article quotes American Library Association president Sam Helmick describing SCOTUS’s failure to act:

“By declining to review the Fifth Circuit’s decision, the Supreme Court has empowered state and local governments to limit which books and materials the people can access in their libraries. The ruling threatens to transform [public] libraries into centers for indoctrination instead of protecting them as centers of open inquiry, undermining the First Amendment right to read unfettered by viewpoint-based censorship.”

PW author Nathalie op de Beeck explains that the Fifth Circuit’s original decision argued that library curation is a form of “government speech”; she quotes John Chrastka, executive director of the EveryLibrary advocacy organization, who said, “Having the Supreme Court let the Fifth Circuit decision stand is another plank in a rapidly evolving and pernicious platform of government speech doctrine.”

I’d never heard library book-acquisition described as “government speech.”

I assume the concept is that since librarians are paid by taxpayer-funded libraries, librarians are therefore government workers in hierarchies, and librarian activity is subject to oversight by senior government officials.

Library book-acquisition as a form of government speech means, it’s speech made by the political officials serving at the top of these government hierarchies.

Political leaders would naturally want books in the library to say what those political leaders want the books to say. (I guess if an opposing party comes to power, librarians would be told to throw out the books, and buy opposing ones.)

SCOTUS is on the road to enshrining this swell Soviet-style “doctrine” as law of the land.

Lots of libraries are already dealing with government employees and elected politicians assessing each book for whether these enact preferred “government speech.”

Looks like it’s about to get worse.

This is gag-me-with-a-spoon totalitarianism.

If we don’t kick these bums out, fast, the only thing left worth reading will be encrypted samizdat.