How a Single Court Case Could Determine the Future of Book Banning in America; Literary Hub, June 17, 2025

Anthony Aycock, Literary Hub; How a Single Court Case Could Determine the Future of Book Banning in America

"Bottom line: in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi–the states covered by the Fifth Circuit–libraries are free to remove books for any reason. 

The plaintiffs now face a choice: accept the Fifth Circuit’s ruling or appeal to the Supreme Court. If there is an appeal, the court may not accept it. Over 7,000 cases are appealed to the high court each year, and it hears only 100-150–less than two percent. Yet I think Little v. Llano County has a good chance of making the docket. 

For one thing, the Fifth Circuit’s en banc reversal of its own panel’s ruling suggests the need for the high court to step in. Second, this Supreme Court has been eager to revisit earlier precedents. In the last few years, it has curtailed abortion protections, ended Chevron deference, and canceled affirmative action in college admissions–all long-standing, seemingly bedrock principles. Why not target Pico, especially since it wasn’t a decisive ruling to begin with?

Third, unlike most book ban cases, Little pertains not to a school library but a public one. Public libraries, according to UCLA professor Eugene Volokh, are not like school libraries. “I tentatively think a public school,” Volokh wrote, “is entitled to decide which viewpoints to promote through its own library,” whereas public libraries “are much more about giving more options to readers, rather than about teaching particular skills and attitudes to students.” 

Public libraries also serve more people–an entire county rather than a school system. Remember Judge Duncan’s belief that anyone who wants a certain book “can buy it or borrow it from somewhere else”? Llano County is small and rural, and many of its residents may not have the purchase option. For them, a book being unavailable in a library is a de facto ban. The pro-library organization EveryLibrary agrees, writing that the Fifth Circuit’s opinion “reveals an indifference to the lived reality of millions of Americans for whom public libraries are their only or primary means of access to books.” 

Here’s hoping that, if Little or any other book ban case ends up before this Supreme Court, those nine justices will consider the issue thoughtfully, creatively, and most important, impartially."