The leaders of a Wyoming county have just learned that banning books doesn’t pay – literally.
Terri Lesley, former director of the Campbell County library system, was fired in 2023 after she refused to remove books with content about LGBTQ+ issues and human sexuality that offended some people in the area.
Lesley chose not to go quietly. She filed a lawsuit against the county alleging a hostile work environment and charging that the library board acted with “malice” and acted with “reckless disregard” of her rights. A separate section of her lawsuit raised church-state issues, asserting that the library board and county officials were trying to forge the library’s collection “in a way that endorsed or favored one denomination of Christianity over other Christian denominations, other religious beliefs, and/or over non-religious beliefs.”
The case was recently settled out of court, and Lesley, who had been at the library for nearly 20 years, will receive $700,000.
“I do feel vindicated. It’s been a rough road, but I will never regret standing up for the First Amendment,” Lesley said, reported CBS News.
The story sounds familiar: A band of religious extremists decided that certain books shouldn’t be in the library’s collection. Among them, CBS reported, were LGBTQ-themed titles such as This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson but also several volumes offering factual information about sex and dating, including How Do You Make a Baby by Anna Fiske, Doing It: Let’s Talk About Sex by Hannah Witton, Sex is a Funny Word by Corey Silverberg, and Dating and Sex: A Guide for the 21st Century Teen Boy by Andrew P. Smiler.
Iris Halpern, Lesley’s attorney, remarked, “We hope at least that it sends a message to other library districts, other states, other counties, that the First Amendment is alive and strong and that our values against discrimination also remain alive and strong. These are public entities, they’re government officials, they need to keep in mind their constitutional obligations.”
That’s a message we need to hear right now, as across the country, aggressive Christian Nationalist groups step up their attacks on the freedom to access information, read and learn. As we noted on this blog last week, which was Banned Books Week, censorship organizations have pushed us to the crisis point.
PEN America documented 6,870 instances of book bans during the 2024-25 school year. In a recent report, the group called book banning “rampant and common” in America, adding, “Never before in the life of any living American have so many books been systematically removed from school libraries across the country. Never before have so many states passed laws or regulations to facilitate the banning of books, including bans on specific titles statewide.”
It’s a national embarrassment – and it doesn’t have to be this way. The folks in Campbell County and elsewhere need to learn a few simple lessons: Public libraries are exactly that – public. That means they will contain a range of materials designed to meet the needs of people from all walks of life.
Some of this material may not be relevant to you; some may even offend you. There’s an easy answer: Don’t read that stuff, and if it really bothers you, tell your children not to read it as well.
The key words here are “your children.” As a parent, you have some say over what they see and read. You have absolutely no say over anyone else’s child.
Photo: Screenshot of Terri Lesley from 9News, Denver.
