Gov. Jared Polis has signed into law a bill designed to protect Colorado libraries and their employees from partisan book-banning battles
On Friday, the governor signed SB24-216, a new law that requires the state’s public libraries to establish written policies for acquiring, retaining, displaying and using library resources — and governing how to handle any requests to remove books or other resources.
Public libraries must follow standards specified in the bill, including that they can’t exclude books and other resources because of the ethnic background or gender identity of anyone associated with the material. Libraries that don’t have established policies, or policies that don’t comply with the new law, “may not remove a library resource from its permanent collection,” the bill states.
“A public library shall not proscribe or prohibit the circulation or procurement of a library resource because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval of the library resource,” the bill states.
The new law also codifies that librarians or other public library employees can’t be fired, demoted disciplined or retaliated against for refusing to remove library resources before they have undergone the proper reconsideration procedure, the results of which must be made public.
And the legislation states that the identities of people who file requests to remove books from libraries are public records under the Colorado Open Records Act.
Colorado’s public libraries have seen a rising number of requests to ban or restrict access to books, programs or displays, mirroring trends across the country as conservative movements target books and programming with LGBTQ and race-related themes.
Data from the American Library Association in 2023 showed 142 titles were challenged in 12 separate attempts to restrict access to books in Colorado libraries. In 2022, the association reported 56 titles were challenged in 17 different requests to Colorado libraries, a 240% increase over the five titles challenged in five attempts recorded in 2018.
In Colorado, these attempts have largely been unsuccessful amid community backlash.
“I like to try to prevent things before they become a problem whenever possible,” said Sen. Lisa Cutter, a Jefferson County Democrat who sponsored the bill along with Sen. Dafna Michaelson Jenet and Reps. Junie Joseph and Eliza Hamrick, all Democrats.
The bill follows the 2021 firing of a librarian by Weld County’s High Plains Library District after she objected to the district’s cancellation of library programs she planned for youth of color and LGBTQ teens in Erie. The library district agreed to pay the librarian $250,000 in a settlement last year after the Colorado Civil Rights Division concluded the district violated state anti-discrimination laws.
“I just think it’s so important for kids to be exposed to a wide variety of experiences and perspectives,” Cutter said. “Libraries help create empathy and understanding. Kids feel isolated when they don’t see themselves in society, but they can see themselves in books and media.”
The bill also was responsive to a fight in which a Crested Butte resident submitted a form asking for the Gunnison County Library District to remove or reclassify Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” the most challenged book in the United States in 2023, according to the American Library Association.
The Crested Butte News filed a public record request seeking book-reconsideration forms filed with the library district, sparking a fight that ended up in the Colorado Court of Appeals, which ultimately ruled that the identities of people asking for books to be banned are shielded by the state statute.
The new law ensures that forms filed with public libraries seeking the removal of books are subject to the Colorado Open Records Act, meaning the person who files them is not entitled to remain anonymous.
“This is the library user trying to change the policy of the library district,” said Jeff Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, who advocated for the release of the unredacted book reconsideration forms. “It’s not a library user or someone checking out a book. It’s someone wanting to change things for other people.”
James LaRue, executive director of Garfield County Libraries, has been at the forefront of censorship and book-banning conversations as he and his staff have fended off attempts to remove or re-shelve Japanese graphic novels that some county residents argued were pornographic.
LaRue said the new law moves best-practice policy into Colorado statute.
“Libraries don’t write the books we collect,” LaRue said. “We reflect the conversations of our culture. We allow our citizens to examine the evidence and draw their own conclusions. This new law is very good news for individual inquiry, for the good people who work at libraries and for democracy.”
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