Statement on the Misapplication of the Government Speech Doctrine in Little v. Llano County

The EveryLibrary Institute strongly urges the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to reject any application of the Government Speech Doctrine to Little v. Llano County as argued by the defendants and the Florida Attorney General.

Public libraries are limited public forums where First Amendment protections must be consistently applied for citizens without the interference or overreach of the government. Libraries are designed to offer access to information, and no government entity, including Llano County, should have the authority to dictate or limit collections based on its own subjective political and social beliefs.

Allowing the Government Speech Doctrine to creep into the management of public libraries will upend everything that a public library is supposed to be. In arguments before the Appeals Court today, the attorney for Llano County went out of the way to call the county’s library a “Government Library” rather than a “Public Library”. This is more than a simple shift in vocabulary. If the court allows the Government Speech Doctrine to be applied to libraries, then the notion that it should serve all people equally would vanish from Llano County, from Texas, and eventually from the United States. The argument that the public library no longer belongs to the people it was established by and for runs counter to not only an honest application of the First Amendment but also to the first words of our Constitution: We the People.

The Government Speech Doctrine is being advanced in Llano County by a local government that wants to censor and remove books that it does not agree with. That local government was supported today by seventeen State Attorneys General who want to have that same power over public schools, public libraries, and public health. The Government Speech Doctrine should only be applied in limited and very proscribed ways in specific cases. It has never been applied to libraries before. It should not be misused as a rationale to justify the removal of books that government officials personally disagree with. 

“Public libraries serve to facilitate the public’s right to receive a wide range of ideas, ensuring that free expression and freedom of inquiry is preserved,” says John Chastka, Executive Director of EveryLibrary and the EveryLibrary Institute. “In Texas, they establish libraries for the  “...dissemination of general information relating to the arts, sciences, and literature.” Allowing the local government to control library collections not only threatens free inquiry but also risks transforming these legitimate public institutions into tools for government-imposed ideologies.” 

The defendants - and the Florida Attorney General - are arguing to normalize the use of the Government Speech Doctrine in a way that would make every decision in a public library or public school a political one. If the Government Speech Doctrine is allowed to be applied to public libraries it would enable local governments to remove materials that conflict with the beliefs of local elected officials. It would turn public libraries into curated repositories of politician-approved content rather than centers for discovery and learning. Under this questionable application of doctrine, any speech that conflicts with the perspectives of whoever is currently in office becomes unconstitutional speech by the fiat of that government. 

Unlike an official government website or publication, public libraries are tasked with providing a wide range of information to the public. Their mission is not to reflect government-approved and politically motivated perspectives, but to foster free inquiry and ensure access to diverse ideas. Extending the Government Speech Doctrine to public libraries would transform these spaces into tools for promoting government propaganda, fundamentally undermining the role of libraries as neutral, accessible centers of knowledge. 

We do not believe that the Government Speech Doctrine should be applied to public libraries, which exist to serve the public’s right to access diverse information, not to reflect government-approved perspectives. The Defendants and the Florida Attorney General’s attempt to extend this doctrine into public libraries threatens to upend the foundational principles of intellectual freedom. The outcome of this case will set a crucial precedent for the role of libraries in our democratic society, and it must reaffirm that libraries exist to serve the public’s right to access diverse, lawful ideas—not to promote government-sanctioned ideologies. We encourage the Court to uphold the established precedent that libraries are limited public forums where the First Amendment applies, rejecting any efforts to justify censorship under the guise of government speech.