A lawsuit filed by Huntington Beach residents and a nonprofit group alleges that the city’s library system restricts minors’ access to books and other materials in violation of state law and the California state constitution.
Huntington Beach city officials, however, say the lawsuit is an attempt to use hyperbole about a "book ban" to strip away parental rights to know what their children are reading and viewing.
The city residents, including two minors, and the nonprofit Alianza Translatinx filed the lawsuit on Feb. 27 in Orange County Superior Court. The city’s decision to stop minors from accessing materials found to have “sexual content” unless they obtain the consent of a parent or guardian violates the California Freedom to Read Act and free-speech protections of the state constitution, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit also criticizes the city’s creation of a 21-member review board that makes the decisions about which materials should be restricted. The panel’s decisions are unappealable, the plaintiffs argue.
“The library measures specifically target any materials deemed to have ‘sexual content,’ an overbroad term paving the way for sweeping censorship efforts that could cover beloved literary classics such as '1984,' 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'The Great Gatsby,'” the lawsuit states.
Other materials that could potentially face restrictions include science and health books about puberty, youth Bibles and other religious texts, and stories about LGBTQ+ experiences, according to the plaintiffs, who are represented by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, First Amendment Coalition and other organizations..
City elected officials gave strongly worded defenses of the policies governing access to library materials in Huntington Beach during a press conference this week.
“Not a single book has been banned in the Huntington Beach Library,” Councilman Chad Williams said on Tuesday. “The ACLU has gotten involved in a book ban that does not exist, and frankly that's not just wrong. That is deceptive.”
Another City Council member, Gracey Van Der Mark, said the library policies are not erasing anyone’s identity and that they are designed to protect youths from age-inappropriate content.
But the lawsuit contends the city measures are impermissibly overbroad limitations on protected speech and that the city measures do not define the terms “sexual content” or “content of (a) sexual nature” – something that makes the city’s review of library materials arbitrary and subjective, according to the plaintiffs.
The complaint also argues that city policies violate the privacy rights of many youths.
“Because the library measures condition a minor’s access to library materials on making their library records available to their parent or guardian, the library measures force patrons younger than age 18 to sacrifice the legally protected confidentiality of their patron records and violate their state constitutional right to privacy,” the lawsuit states.
City officials, however, said the ACLU’s efforts in this case are an attempt to strip away parental rights to decide what is appropriate for their children to read.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to bar the defendants from limiting access to library materials for those 13 years or older even when they lack parental permission. They are also asking the court to compel the defendants to comply with all requirements of the California Freedom to Read Act and the state constitution, to declare that the current city policies violate plaintiffs’ rights and to order defendants to pay the plaintiffs’ attorneys fees and court-related costs.