School board member admits to banning books without reading them, faces lawsuit

"I don't like them. I wouldn't read them. I'll be honest I've read the reviews on some of them…" With these words at a public meeting, Tennessee's Rutherford County School Board member Stan Vaught admitted to banning books he hadn't read — a revelation that kicked off a federal lawsuit.

Three students and the writers' organization PEN America are suing the Rutherford County School Board for systematically removing more than 140 books from school libraries, including works by Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners. The lawsuit alleges the board violated students' First Amendment rights by banning books based on personal disagreements rather than legitimate educational concerns.

According to the complaint, board members relied primarily on BookLooks.org, a website connected to the Hitler-quoting group Moms for Liberty, instead of reading the books themselves or considering their literary merit. The board repeatedly overruled their own librarians' recommendations to keep books like Toni Morrison's Beloved and Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, and Ernest Cline' Ready Player One because it has "characters discussing beliefs that heaven and god are not
real."

The hasty removal process created chaos in school libraries. Some had to close their circulation desks as librarians scrambled to pull hundreds of books from shelves. Students were even ordered to immediately surrender checked-out copies of banned titles.

"The Board's removal of books was—and continues to be—motivated by their desire to suppress ideas that were not in keeping with Defendant's political values," the complaint states.