Judge Rules Censorship by Petition
to Be Unconstitutional
More than a year after issuing a temporary restraining order on the enactment of a February 1999 ordinance legalizing library censorship in Wichita Falls, Texas, U.S. District Judge Jerry Buchmeyer has ruled the ordinance unconstitutional. The decision was the result of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Texas last year after 570 library cardholders signed a petition demanding that Daddy’s Roommate and Heather Has Two Mommies be removed from the children’s nonfiction area. The ordinance had required the library to restrict access to any title that at least 300 people petitioned against.
The ordinance, Buchmeyer wrote in his September 19 ruling, “actually facilitates an infinite number of content- and viewpoint-based speech restrictions.” He went on to laud City Librarian Linda Hughes as “the real heroine of this unfortunate story” for defending the titles.
City officials are considering an appeal. Mayor Jerry Lueck is also weighing a municipal referendum to determine the books’ fate. “We really don’t care what [Buchmeyer’s] opinion is. It’ll be the opinion of 51% of the people of Wichita Falls whether they want the books there,” Lueck said in the September 20 Wichita Falls Times Record News.
Posted September 25, 2000.
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