Book challenges, content controversies roil Fremont County libraries

LANDER—Inside Fremont County’s library, patrons can peruse magazines and DVDs, work jigsaw puzzles, take children to storytime or select from a large collection of books. 

Young readers can also access at least two controversial titles and log onto the unfettered world of the internet. Those realities helped touch off what has become a drawn-out controversy involving free speech, censorship, parental obligation, outsider activist groups and what materials belong in Fremont County’s three libraries in Lander, Riverton and Dubois. 

The issue took on a new intensity when the county commission, which appoints library board members, threatened in an April 2 letter to interfere unless members could finalize decisions regarding the board’s materials review policy, install internet filters on its children’s section computers and cease “inappropriate behaviors.” The commission set a May 1 deadline. 

“If we don’t see the issues listed above addressed by the end of the May Library Board meeting, we will be forced to remove the Chair and place Commissioner Mike Jones on the Library Board for a few months to ensure these policies and concerns are addressed,” the letter read. “Please give these issues the highest priority.”

In a special April 17 library board meeting, members made progress on meeting the commission’s requests. Some, however, bristled at the idea of interference. 

“We’re not looking to pick a fight with the commissioners,” board Treasurer John Angst said. “We have to respond to their letter” in a way that meets the library board rules, he added, “but I don’t think we should kowtow to the exhortations of a rather emotional group.”

The letter came after months of friction between board members, county commissioners, constituents and patrons amid book challenges; condemnation of inappropriate text messages and inflammatory T-shirts; outbursts at meetings and even protests. There have been FOIA requests and hours of circular discussions, and the issue prompted many involved to issue screeds.

As the Fremont County Library finds itself mired in a struggle involving issues vexing libraries across the nation, many hope that cooler heads will prevail. In a letter of her own, library board member Perry Cook stressed the need to move past the turbulence and get back to the business of running a library. 

“I’m saddened by the controversial state in which the Fremont County Library system has found itself,” she read at the outset of the April 17 meeting. “We have brought this on by recent unprofessional, inaccurate and rude behavior from the library board, from the county commissioners and from the public. The controversy has impaired the library board’s ability to focus on their main job of developing policies, overseeing the library budget and strategic planning.”

Texts, T-shirts, tension

The trouble started last summer, Library Director Anita Marple said, when a citizen filed a complaint about Wind River Pride reserving a Riverton Library meeting room to show two films. The films were inappropriate, the complaint asserted, and asked the library to cancel the event. It also said the library shelves need to be “cleaned up and curated to a higher standard.” The library clarified that it was not a library-sponsored event and that staff followed protocol for reserving rooms, she said. Complaints persisted.

That this happened in a politically charged moment — the number of titles targeted for censorship in the U.S. grew 65% from 2022 to  2023 according to the American Library Association, reaching the highest levels the organization has ever documented — may have set the stage for what followed.

When two spots opened on the library board, Marple sent a text to Cook asking her to run again in order to prevent an “ultra-conservative activist” getting the seat. Though Marple said it was a private text and she just wanted to avoid any agenda-driven people on the board, right or left, commissioners and others condemned her action after the text was shared in board emails and became public through a Freedom of Information Act request. Marple apologized to the board in an email. 

After that, a report that a youth had witnessed an adult viewing pornography on a library computer led to discussion of internet filters. 

In August, the county commission issued a letter to the library board requesting it address issues of room rental, the policies surrounding the pornography complaint and Marple’s text. 

A board review of the library’s meeting room policy and public comment period ensued. The panel then drafted a policy that would implement internet filters. The 45-day comment period for that measure closed April 16.

In the meantime, an obscenity charge leveled against two young-adult-section books — “Tricks” and “Smoke” by Ellen Hopkins, which contain prostitution, drug abuse, rape and other topics — sparked intense debate over the library’s materials review policy. 

A photograph of board member Kristen McClelland in Walmart wearing a shirt that said “Get your porn at the Fremont County Library” circulated on Facebook, raised tensions further. 

Months of packed meetings and tense debates over what constitutes obscenity and pornography and how the library should police patron access ensued. Marple decided to keep the challenged books on the shelf, and the board voted 3-2 to support her decision, with McClelland and Marta Mossburg casting the no votes. The minority members also asked that Marple at least move “Tricks,” the more controversial of the two, to the adult section. She ultimately declined. 

Poor communication of library leaders has exacerbated concerns, said Jones, who is the county commission’s library liaison. 

“There were like four issues [in the original letter] and they got back to us on like one or two, but they really never formally came back to address each one in detail,” he said. It was only when commissioners sent a follow-on letter that they found out the board had addressed some of the others, he said. 

“You know, if you don’t tell us then we assume you didn’t do it,” he said. 

Constituents of the largely conservative county, meanwhile, have been demanding answers and lodging complaints about library materials to commissioners, Jones confirmed. 

Finally, he said, the board feels the library has been dragging its feet on one issue that it considers a no-brainer: installing internet filters on computers in the children’s section. “That’s not up for debate,” he said. 

Push, pull, impasse

In the multifaceted debate, the idea that appears to divide people most strongly is the balance between censorship and free speech. 

Critics say outside political groups like Moms for Liberty and MassResistance are attempting to influence decisions Fremont County residents should make. Moms for Liberty is a far-right “parents’ rights” organization that has netted headlines by challenging books and curricula it sees as leftist. MassResistance, a “pro-family” activist organization that targets LGBTQ issues, was involved in a library controversy in Gillette, and Arthur Schaper, who directs the California chapter, made the public records request last summer that revealed Marple’s controversial text.

It should be up to parents to oversee what their child is reviewing, censorship critics believe, and it’s not the library’s job to remove books that could impact the entire reading public.

“I have a sixth grader and an eighth grader who have grown up in the Fremont County Library System, and it is a place where I have felt really safe with my kids,” former library staffer Ami Vincent said during a March meeting. That includes sometimes having hard conversations about the content of books. 

But others worry about making highly sexualized content available to children. “Tricks” includes descriptions of prostitution, sex trafficking, graphic sex and drug abuse, among others. They also defend McClelland’s First Amendment right to wear whatever T-shirt she pleases. 

Not all parents are as involved as Vincent, Janelle Hahn of Lander said, and unsupervised kids go into the library to access age-inappropriate materials that “will not pass the Miller test” — a legal test for determining whether expression constitutes obscenity. 

Cody Beers, president of the Fremont County Library Foundation, said giving young people access to information, knowledge and books is crucial in equipping them to participate in debates like this — which are at the core of democracy. 

On the board, too, members have struggled to find compromise on the nuances of reviewing materials and how they are labeled. 

Community feedback indicates the library collection should remain intact, McClelland said in early April, but the library should still improve labeling or parental controls. 

“Let’s put the power in the parent’s hands,” Mossburg said. 

Finalized policies 

In its latest meeting, the board hammered out several issues. 

This includes a materials policy as follows: When a book is challenged, the director will review and rule on it. If that ruling is appealed, the board will vote. If the majority of the board supports the director’s ruling, it stands. If a majority desires more inquiry, board members will then review the entirety of the challenged material and schedule an appeal hearing. The person making the challenge also has to read the book. 

In terms of age appropriateness, the library has some existing guardrails. When a parent or guardian obtains a library card for a minor, they can add specific guidelines that are inputted as “notes” into the system. Parents can monitor the child’s account activity online. Marple agreed to look into the feasibility of allowing parents and guardians to place specific restrictions on which books their children can or can’t check out to add an extra layer of restriction. 

Marple also brought up the T-shirt, telling McClelland that it made the staff and members of the public uncomfortable. “You need to know, there was a negative impact to your action.”

McClelland hasn’t worn the shirt since, she said. “I don’t know that that was an appropriate thing to do, but I can’t change it. And I will take responsibility for that.”

Cook urged the board to embrace civility, learn from mistakes and move on. 

But will it be over?

Some residents have criticized the county commissioners for “micro-managing” the library, which has also given rise to a discussion about how much autonomy the library director and board should have. The model of a library director as sole arbiter may have worked decades ago, Commissioner Jones said, but times have changed and community input should also be considered.

“And I think that’s the hill that the board is willing to die on and say ‘No, we think the community can set their own standards,’” he said.  

It remains to be seen if the board’s actions satisfy the commissioners. The library board meets in Riverton and via Zoom Wednesday, the day of the commissioners’ deadline. 

Zooming out, Marple said, she believes “the movement here started because of a national movement,” and it has fueled a lot of fear and anger on both sides. “This is not something that started because regular library users were concerned about material in the library that had been here a long time.”

Despite that, she hopes people have felt heard through the process, but also, “that people have listened.”

In March, board treasurer Angst stressed the need for exactly that — to see people as neighbors, not enemies. “By doing so, we can find over time the answers to what we need to be, which is not somebody else’s decision.” 

It’s a tough challenge, Jones said. “I think it’s something we have to wrestle out ourselves, and it’s messy as heck and we’re taking a lot of fire from both sides here.”