Politics roil regional library districts

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

About seven months after Idaho House Bill 710 went into effect as Idaho Code 18-1517B, placing a range of restrictions on access to library materials deemed “harmful to minors,” the law is facing its second legal challenge with a suit filed by the Donnelly Public Library, national book publishers, and Idaho parents and students.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho on Feb. 4, argues that I.C. 18-1517B — otherwise known as the Children’s School and Library Protection Act — is “vague and sweeping,” and runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution “by forcing public schools and libraries to undertake drastic measures to restrict minors’ access to books, or face injunction and/or monetary penalty.”

The Donnelly library is part of the suit due to the onerous demands put on its facilities by compliance with the law, which has led some libraries to move materials defined as “obscene” or otherwise “harmful” to patrons under 18 to an age-restricted location.

However, the rural library is only 1,024 square feet and “our size prohibits us from separating our ‘grown up’ books to be out of the accessible range of children,” library officials wrote in a May 2024 Facebook post. “In order to comply with the legislation we will be transitioning our Library to be an adult only library as of July 1st. …

“This change is painful and not what we had hoped for at all. We desire to comply with state and federal legislation, but because of size we have to protect our staff, our library, and our taxpayer money.”

Courtesy photo

The East Bonner County Library District has not joined the suit, “but I am not surprised to hear there is one,” EBCL Director Vanessa Velez told the Reader in an email.

“Because of the inherent bias in the law — especially the part that defines any act of homosexuality as sexual conduct and therefore ‘harmful to minors’ — and its overly broad and vague language, I think it was only a matter of time,” she added. “The overreaching nature of the restriction requirements also threatens First Amendment rights, as the publishers in the suit point out.”

Meanwhile, Velez indicated that EBCL “has no intention of preemptively creating an adult-only room, which for us would require an interior renovation to wall off space that would then need to be locked to restrict access.”

What’s more, creating an age-restricted space for certain materials would include diverting staff to check identification.

“Although I understand why some libraries are restricting access to minors because they cannot afford potential lawsuits or legal counsel, without that motivation, I believe that preemptively creating adult-restricted collections in a public library is governmental overreach, as you now have library management making the decision of what is ‘appropriate’ for community members to access, instead of leaving that power and determination in community members’ hands,” Velez wrote.

The Boundary County Library established an “adult-only” room even before H.B. 710 was signed into law as I.C. 18-1517B — also on the heels of heated protests that resulted in the resignation of the then-director in 2022. 

More recently, the board of the Community Library Network in Kootenai County voted Jan. 16 to pull 140 titles from its stacks for evaluation and establish an age-restricted room at the Post Falls Library. In addition, the CLN barred minors from using their library cards to check out materials from other library systems that are not beholden to Idaho’s “harmful to minors” provisions.

Going even further than that, CLN’s new cardholder policy cuts off access for minors to materials deemed “obscene” at other Idaho libraries.

“I’m going to protect minors, and therefore I’m not going to let minors have access to anywhere, including Washington state, including other libraries in Idaho that may not be as conservative as we are,” CLN Board Member Tom Hanley said, according to a Jan. 19 report from the Spokesman-Review.

In a Jan. 31 news release, CLN Director Martin Walters described the system’s new “Mature Content Collection,” writing, “The only difference between the Mature Content Collection and other CLN collections is that this new collection was established pursuant to the Children’s School and Library Protection Act. Consequently, there are legal obligations associated with this collection. These obligations bind the CLN which operates public libraries in the state of Idaho.”

While CLN’s own lawyer, Colton Boyles, cautioned the board that it would be taking on significant liability by revoking the access of 8,900 library cards, “A majority of board members believed preventing children from access to these materials superseded these concerns,” the Spokesman reported.

CLN’s move doesn’t sit well with West Bonner County Library District Director Meagan Mize, who told the Reader that while her libraries haven’t yet had to confront the new law, “we’re part of a 30-library consortium and the Community Library Network is a huge part of that. So all of their bullcrap is eventually going to trickle out in our direction.”

In addition to overseeing the Priest River and Blanchard libraries, Mize is also director of the governing board of the Cooperative Information Network, which is currently undergoing a rebranding and reorganization as Inland Northwest Libraries. The consortium includes all seven libraries in the CLN, as well as West Bonner, Pend Oreille County, Liberty Lake, the city of Coeur d’Alene, Plummer, St. Maries, all of Benewah and Shoshone counties, and others. 

East Bonner County and Boundary County are not members of the consortium.

“It goes all the way to the Montana border and all the way down almost to Moscow,” Mize said. 

Consortium members share a catalog, collection, online platform and a host of other resources.

She said CLN’s new policy — especially limiting or outright revoking access for minors to non-CLN libraries — plays havoc with the wider consortium.

“The rest of us libraries are not on board with that and they don’t get to arbitrarily make policies that affect the entire consortium,” she said.

According to Mize, the CLN board made its decision to establish an adult-only room in Post Falls and cut cards for minors on Jan. 16 without any warning — doing so a day after the consortium met on Jan. 15.

“They did not tell us … otherwise, we probably would have had a few things to say about it, because these changes affect all of us,” she said.

The governing board of the Cooperative Information Network — soon to be Inland Northwest Libraries — is set to meet on Wednesday, Feb. 19 in the Coeur d’Alene library at 10 a.m. Mize said the agenda will cover policies and procedures for reorganizing under the new name and structure, but also addressing CLN’s recent moves.

“How absolute dare [CLN] not bring this forward and pull this crap,” she said. “The conversation is going to be directed into, ‘How do you expect to be a part of the consortium when you are arbitrarily making — when you’re secretively, I feel — making changes that affect the entire consortium and how we function?’”

Mize said that CLN’s new policies would not only limit access for its own users, but make it impossible for patrons at other member libraries to request certain books that may only be available in the Kootenai County system. 

“So, if a kid wants to check out a book or a parent wants to put a hold on a book for maybe a homeschool thing or something, they can’t do that because they’re no longer allowing minors to have any access outside of the Community Library Network,” she said.

“When you’re saying you’re going to cut all minor cards to where they don’t have access to the consortium at all, and they can’t come into my Blanchard library — which is geographically very close to Kootenai County and we get a cross usage of patrons from Spirit Lake, Athol, the Blanchard area — if you as a parent say, ‘To hell with this, I’m going to go into Blanchard and get that book,’ your card won’t even work there, which is completely anti-the consortium,” Mize added. “Not to mention that that is a violation of in loco parentis.”

Asked why the CLN would take such a dramatic step without consulting fellow consortium members, Mize said, “Their board is hell-bent on destroying that library system.”

She sees CLN’s stance as indicative of a wider political trend. Mize pointed to one example last year, when the CLN board determined that libraries shouldn’t be open on Sundays for religious reasons. 

“Well, it was brought to their attention that, ‘Hey, that’s not how public entities are run.’ And so they basically dismantled the budget to the point that on Oct. 1 they closed on Sundays,” she said.

“It’s the same with the West Bonner County School District — their agenda is to destroy this taxing district and that’s what they’re doing,” Mize added, later describing the “playbook” at work.

“These people have their marching orders from the Republican central committees, from the Idaho Freedom Foundation, so they destroyed our school district in three months and we are still in a state of irreparable damage,” she said. “So, to me, they’re going in and doing everything they can, as fast as they can, so hopefully by the time they get sued, recalled, whatever it might be, the damage is done and the ship is sinking.”

As evidence that CLN’s policies are politically motivated rather than aimed at protecting minors, Mize said the 140 titles under review don’t meet the criteria of inciting “prurient interest” or lack social, literary or political value.

“The books that [Walters] has in his office are not even about sex. They’re The Firekeeper’s Daughter — Indigenous — The Hate You Give — Black — other things like this that don’t meet the prurient interest,” she said. “None of the books on the list are even children’s books — they’re young adult and adult fiction books. This law is supposed to be about protecting minors. Why do you need to protect adults from their First Amendment right to read whatever the hell they want?”

According to Mize, the Feb. 19 meeting may determine whether or not CLN even remains in the library consortium. 

“[W]hy would we enter into a joint power agreement with somebody who’s going against what we believe as librarians?” she said.

Meanwhile, though West Bonner hasn’t joined the ongoing litigation — nor is it likely to, unless it can prove that it has suffered damages as a result of the law — “we’re absolutely behind this lawsuit,” Mize said, adding that she plans to write a letter of support for the plaintiffs.

“I personally feel like every library in the state should be on this,” she said.

Attend the Wednesday, Feb. 19 meeting of the Cooperative Information Network/Inland Northwest Libraries at 10 a.m. in the Coeur d’Alene Public Library (702 E. Front Ave.), or Microsoft Teams at bit.ly/4b2groz. Meeting ID: 27329822054, passcode: 4WZd4X.