- Board Vice Chairwoman Frances Rosales requests 150 books to be pulled from libraries and reviewed by librarians to determine if books are sexually explicit
- Rutherford County Schools Director James “Jimmy” Sullivan responds by telling principals to remove 150 books
- Free Speech Center director offended by removal of books
- Board member Caleb Tidwell wants publishers to screen books
- Board member Butch Vaughn questions book removal pressure tactics
- Board Chairwoman Claire Maxwell worries about First Amendment lawsuit
- Board faces legal warning from ACLU
- Law requires freedom to browse library books, Rutherford County Library Alliance Vice President Keri Lambert says
- Lambert advocates for free ‘choice to read’
- Sit-in to promote banned books scheduled
Rutherford County school officials recently upset First Amendment advocates by pulling 160 more books from libraries for pending obscenity reviews by librarians.
The district’s new total of pulled books has climbed to 196.
The pulled books include, “Catch 22,” a satirical novel about World War II by Joseph Heller; and “Beloved,” a Pulitzer Prize winning novel about an enslaved woman in Kentucky prior to the Civil War who fled to be free in Ohio by Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison.
“This is government censorship that blatantly ignores the First Amendment,” Rutherford County Library Alliance Vice President Keri Lambert wrote in a statement on behalf of the local book freedom advocacy group.
Board member Frances Rosales called for a 6-1 vote Nov. 14 for the 160 pulled books to be reviewed by librarians who would provide recommendations to the elected school officials by May on whether the books should be removed from libraries for being sexually explicit or returned to shelves, according to state law. Each librarian will earn $1,000 for the reviews, Rosales said.
Only board member Katie Darby opposed the Rosales motion. Darby suggested the better approach was the one fellow board member Caleb Tidwell used in September when he called for the majority vote to remove six books he challenged for being in violation of state obscenity law prior to the pulling of 160 more. The September decision pushed the total then to 36 removed books after the district had pulled 30 the previous school year.
At least two of the removed books, “Catch 22” and “Beloved” are among the “AP Lit Reading List – 50 Best Books to Read” for Advanced Placement courses for high school students, according to a College Transitions webpage dated Nov. 16, 2023.
Students scoring high enough on AP exams earn college credits.
Reacher wanting to use any of the pulled books for the state-approved course curriculum can still obtain them because of educational value, including “Beloved” and “Homegoing” by Yaa Gyasi, Rosales said.
The board meanwhile awaits a Tennessee Attorney General Opinion about proceeding forward with interpreting state law involving the removal of books deemed to be sexually explicit.
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Board vice chairwoman requests removal of 150 books
Public records obtained by The Daily News Journal show that board Vice Chairwoman Rosales requested Rutherford County Schools Director James “Jimmy” Sullivan to review 150 of the 160 pulled books for “potential violations related to sexually explicit materials in school libraries,” states her Nov. 11 email to him.
Rosales said she used the website BookLooks.org, which is the one Tidwell had been using, to look for books rated 3-5 for being sexually explicit and cross referenced the 150 books with books that had been removed by the Wilson County school district.
“The board has been accused by some board members and echoed by the community members the same sentiments that we are housing sexually explicit books and pornography,” Rosales said. “As a parent, that is concerning to me.”
Rosales said she wants the professionally trained school librarians to review the books.
“The librarians should be in charge of this process,” Rosales said.
Letting the librarians review the books will allow the board to focus on other education issues, Rosales said.
The board’s issues include seeking funds to build and maintain schools for the fast-growing district and serve the increasing number of English as a Second Language students, Rosales said.
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Schools Director Sullivan tells principals to remove books
Schools Director Sullivan responded to the Rosales request prior the the majority of the board’s Nov. 14 decision on librarians reviewing books by emailing principals Nov. 12 with instructions on what to do with the list of 150 books.
“Per RCS policy (4.403), these books are to be removed from school libraries pending final decision by the School Board,” Sullivan said in an email to principals.
The book removing policy mentions state law. The statute includes an “in whole or in part” description that deviates from the U.S. Supreme Court case law that requires the whole of a book to be considered before removal:
- “Any book, pamphlet, magazine, printed matter, however reproduced, or sound recording, which, in whole or in part, contains nudity, sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence, or sado-masochistic abuse, is patently offensive, or appeals to the prurient interest, or which contains explicit and detailed verbal descriptions or narrative accounts of sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence, or sado-masochistic abuse, is patently offensive, or appeals to the prurient interest, shall be immediately removed from all libraries within the school district and then reviewed for final decision by the Board.”
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Free Speech Center director offended by removal of books
The Rosales request to remove 150 books offended Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center, a national organization with an office at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro.
“Think about what message it sends when an elected official summarily removes 150 books from school libraries without any evidence that these books – many widely acclaimed – are harmful,” said Paulson, a former editor in chief for USA Today.
“Leave the books on the shelves and conduct all the reviews you wish, but don’t teach young people that political power trumps ideas,” Paulson said.
“Let’s keep in mind that these books are not required reading and that they sit on a shelf for students to voluntarily check out. We ought to be applauding young people who are actually reading of their own free will and the schools that offer them books that are relevant to their lives.”
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The statement from Lambert, the Rutherford County Library Alliance vice president, agreed with Paulson’s comments.
“Banning books undermines the fundamental rights of free expression and intellectual freedom,” Lambert’s statement said.
“Literature serves as a powerful tool for exploring new ideas, questioning societal norms and promoting empathy through diverse perspectives.
“When books are banned, we risk limiting access to these opportunities, particularly for young readers who are in the process of forming their own understanding of the world.”
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Board member Caleb Tidwell wants publishers to screen books
Prior to the pulling of 150 books for review at the request of Rosales, fellow board member Tidwell requested 10 more books to be reviewed by the elected school officials for removal by Dec. 5.
Tidwell, however, voted in the majority for the Rosales resolution that combined both requests for a total of 160 pulled books that await the review process by librarians and final decision by the board.
“In my opinion, the current review process is not sufficient enough,” Tidwell said.
Tidwell also said he wants publishers that obtain tax dollars from the school district to screen for books that violate state law regarding sexually explicit materials instead of adding to the burden on school librarians to annually screen books.
“If the publishers were screening them better, in my opinion, there would be a whole lot less getting through,” Tidwell said.
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Board members Vaughn questions book removal pressure tactics
The school board has heard from Lambert and other book freedom advocates known to wear purple shirts at meetings.
The elected school officials also have heard from people wearing white shirts wanting books removed. A majority in the white shirts attend the large World Outreach Church in Murfreesboro with board member Butch Vaughn, he confirmed.
“When people came to the meetings with the white shirts on, I felt like they were there to pressure me to vote to take these books out,” Vaughn said. “I received tons of emails from church (people saying), ‘We’re depending on you.'”
Although disagreeing with the pressure tactics from the emails and people wearing white shirts at school board meetings, Vaughn said he made his own decision in September to remove books based on state law.
“I voted to take them out because they were obscene,” said Vaughn, who of late has been displaying a Christian cedar wood cross that’s a gift from a friend in front of where he sits at board meetings. “I don’t think you should try to pressure anybody. Everybody has a right to believe what they believe and a right to make choices.
“I did what I thought was morally right. Shirts and emails didn’t affect me at all.”
A retired school administrator for over 40 years, including as principal at the Rutherford district’s Central Middle, Blackman Middle and Oakland High, Vaughn said he “never had a complaint about a book in any way.”
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Board chairwoman worries about First Amendment lawsuit
Prior to the board’s vote to remove six books, Vaughn agreed with a proposal from fellow board member Stan Vaught to remove the books from regular library circulation and place them in a mature reading area that requires student access through parent consent.
Board Chairwoman Claire Maxwell also backed placing the books in question in a mature reading area that requires parent consent.
“I was also trying to save us from getting sued,” Maxwell said.
Maxwell said the board values input from the librarians examining the 160 books recently removed to “make sure that we are following the law.”
“I trust our librarians,” Maxwell said.
The librarians will make sure no sexually explicit books “got slipped in,” the library collections “that shouldn’t be there,” Maxwell said, adding that she doesn’t believe there is.
“This is a conservative county,” Maxwell said. “There’s no porn in our schools.”
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Board faces legal warning from ACLU
Rutherford County school officials have been warned about removing library books by the American Civil Liberties Union.
ACLU Foundation Tennessee Legal Director Stella Yarbrough wrote a Sept. 16 letter to the elected school officials urging them to adhere to the board’s policy that “supports principles of intellectual freedom inherent in the First Amendment of the United States.”
The ACLU letter mentions the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Miller v. California ruling that a person deciding whether speech is obscene must consider the following:
- “(a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
- (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and
- (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
First Amendment rights:ACLU warns Rutherford school board about removing ‘Beloved,’ other books from libraries
Lambert: Law requires freedom to browse library books
Book freedom advocates such as Lambert said the board ought to go by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and what the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Miller First Amendment case. That means considering a whole book rather than just part of a book as state law suggests in deciding if a book is obscene, Lambert said.
“The supremacy clause, which is what unites us as the United States of America, clearly tells us that any local or state law that contradicts the Constitution is invalid, so if our school board was truly concerned about following the law, they wouldn’t be removing any materials unless they were truly ‘obscene,” Lambert said in her statement.
“To be considered obscene according to the law, the material must meet the criteria in the Miller Test, which is the definition issued by the Supreme Court. It is illegal to remove materials based on cherry picked content from within the material.”
Lambert also said the district policy should allow freedom to browse libraries rather than adopt a parent consent opt in policy she said is unconstitutional.
The U.S. Supreme Court has rulings, such as Denver Area Educational Telecommunications Consortium v. Federal Communications Commission, that say the government “can’t restrict access to information,” Lambert said.
The school board, however, could establish an opt out policy for parents wanting to restrict access to books for only their children, Lambert said.
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Lambert advocates for free ‘choice to read’
The board’s compensation for the librarians to review 160 books removed recently is not enough given each book will take at least 8 hours to review, Lambert said.
“That $1,000 stipend is an insult to our librarians,” Lambert said.
Lambert’s statement also said that book bans often stem from the belief that certain ideas or themes are inappropriate, offensive, or harmful.
“However, restricting access to these works denies readers the opportunity to engage with complex issues and develop their critical thinking skills,” Lambert’s statement said. “Rather than shielding individuals from uncomfortable ideas, we should encourage thoughtful dialogue and exploration of diverse viewpoints.”
The statement also said that censorship can have a disproportionate effect on marginalized communities, whose voices and experiences are often represented in the books that face bans.
“The ability to see oneself reflected in literature is essential for fostering a sense of belonging and understanding,” Lambert’s statement said. “By banning these works, we risk erasing these important stories from the public discourse.”
The Rutherford County Library Alliance and other book freedom advocates must defend the right to read freely and make our own decisions about what to read, Lambert’s statement added.
“While not all books will resonate with everyone, the choice to read − or not to read − a particular book should lie with individuals, not with those who seek to impose their views on others,” Lambert said in the statement.
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Reach reporter Scott Broden with news tips or questions by emailing him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ScottBroden. To support his work with The Daily News Journal, sign up for a digital subscription.
Sit-in to promote banned books scheduled
The Spine Bookshop, an independent bookstore in Smyrna, will be holding a peaceful demonstration called, “The Banned Book Sit-In,” from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Dec. 1, according to a press release from store owner Lindsay Schultz. Her store is at 304 S. Lowry St. #A3.
Participants are encouraged to wear purple in support of the Rutherford County Library Alliance or teal for The Banned Book Brigade the store launched to combat the growing issue of book banning across Tennessee.
The Banned Book Brigade participants can support this project by purchasing books from the banned lists in Wilson or Rutherford counties and donating them to the shop, or making monetary contributions, enabling the store to acquire the titles. These books will then be made available for free to the public, with The Spine Bookshop taking no profit.
For more information about The Banned Book Brigade, the Banned Book Sit-In, or The Spine Bookshop, please visit our website at thespinebookshop.com or contact Lindsay Schultz at 615-768-9833 or [email protected].
This post was originally published on here
