Here's my summary of the May 23 majority en banc opinion by Judge Kyle Duncan in Little v. Llano County, which the Supreme Court just declined to review (you can also read more about the debate on the rights of listeners, Judge James Ho's concurrence on positive vs. negative rights, and the uncertain state of Supreme Court precedent on the subject):
We consider whether someone may challenge a public library's removal of books as violating the Free Speech Clause.
Patrons of a county library in Texas sued the librarian and other officials, alleging they removed 17 books because of their treatment of racial and sexual themes. The district court ruled that defendants abridged plaintiffs' "right to receive information" under the Free Speech Clause and ordered the books returned to the shelves. On appeal, a divided panel of our court affirmed in part. We granted en banc rehearing.
We now reverse the preliminary injunction and render judgment dismissing the Free Speech claims. We do so for two separate reasons.
First, plaintiffs cannot invoke a right to receive information to challenge a library's removal of books. Yes, Supreme Court precedent sometimes protects one's right to receive someone else's speech. But plaintiffs would transform that precedent into a brave new right to receive information from the government in the form of taxpayer-funded library books. The First Amendment acknowledges no such right.
That is a relief, because trying to apply it would be a nightmare. How would judges decide when removing a book is forbidden? No one in this case—not plaintiffs, nor the district court, nor the panel—can agree on a standard. May a library remove a book because it dislikes its ideas? Because it finds the book vulgar? Sexist? Inaccurate? Outdated? Poorly written? Heaven knows. The panel majority itself disagreed over whether half of the 17 books could be removed. For their part, plaintiffs took the baffling view that libraries cannot even remove books that espouse racism.
