Alabama’s new library rules target every book about transgender people

The Alabama Public Library Service board recently adopted strict guidelines requiring public libraries to limit young people’s access to books containing material related to gender identity or transgender people.

Under the amended administrative code, books that discuss gender-transition procedures or “gender ideology,” or that “promote” the existence of more than two biological genders, must be removed from youth sections and relocated to sections for adults.

The push for the policy change was spearheaded by board Chair John Wahl, the current Republican nominee for state lieutenant governor, and board member Amy Minton. The effort intensified last November, when Minton announced the agency was seeking to create a staff position dedicated to overseeing compliance with the amendment.

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Alabama Public Library Service board member Amy Minton and board chair John Wahl, who is currently running for lieutenant governor in the state.Facebook/Amy Dozier Minton

“I think putting someone in this role that could really work with local libraries, and make sure we go above and beyond, to make sure they do have someone they can lean on and a resource they can use, I think that is good for local libraries,” Wahl said in a recent interview with the Alabama Reflector.

But critics — including APLS employees — called the proposed position a misuse of limited resources and said small, publicly funded libraries already lack the staff needed to review their collections and enforce the restrictions.

“We really have no need for this position,” said Pennie Broussard, an APLS human resources employee, who advised the board to rescind the job posting. “The agency really has no need for this position. We have got an assistant director, and some of the duties that were mentioned for this position to do are [her] duties that she is graded on for her appraisal.”

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Read Freely Alabama, an organization that opposes restrictions on access to library books, echoed Broussard’s concerns.

“Board member Amy Minton admitted that she intends for the ‘sole job’ of the assistant director to be to identify individual books libraries would be forced to censor or lose their state funding,” Read Freely stated in a press release. “This creates a state censorship officer, and expands inappropriate state control over local libraries.”

In addition to restricting young people’s access to books, the board has required libraries to implement the amendment by Oct. 1. Libraries that fail to update their policies and secure approval by the deadline will have their state aid frozen immediately.

“The decision has been made by our board is that we shouldn’t be sitting here reading all the time to look for books because, face it, we are a taxpayer-subsidized organization,” Rex Bain, director of Lawrence County Public Library, told local NBC affiliate WAFF. Bain said his staff, consisting of three part-time employees, was scrambling to meet the deadline. “We receive funding from the city, from the county, from the state. As a taxpayer, do you want to pay people to sit and read all day instead of doing other work?”

Bain also said that during his 13 years as director, the library has never received a single complaint from a patron about the content of a book.

“To me, it’s like it’s making a lot of work for nothing because it’s not been an issue here,” he said. “That’s not to say it can’t become an issue, but that’s not our experience at this point. And it’s a difficult process.”