The plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit against Llano County have filed a petition to have their case heard at the highest level; now, the county has until Oct. 14, to file a response in opposition.

A 48-page petition for a writ of certiorari was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 9. The petitioners argue that justices with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit were erroneous to have sided with Llano County in their divided decision in May.

“The First Amendment provides fundamental protection when government officials suppress speech because they disagree with the ideas expressed,” said attorney Elizabeth Prelogar with Cooley LLP. Cooley, the national law firm representing the petitioners in the Little v. Llano County lawsuit, provided a statement for the News in an email this week. “Llano County’s removal of books from the public library to prevent access to disfavored viewpoints violated that essential constitutional guarantee. The Fifth Circuit was wrong to say that this kind of governmental censorship does not trigger any scrutiny at all under the First Amendment, and its decision warrants Supreme Court review.”

The petition presents one central question: “At the urging of a handful of private citizens, government officials in Llano County, Texas, removed 17 books from the county library’s shelves. A district court found that those book-removal decisions were motivated by a desire to censor particular viewpoints. The question presented is: Whether those book-removal decisions are subject to scrutiny under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.”

After Llano County formally responds, U.S. Supreme Court justices will decide whether or not to grant the petition. If the petition is granted, the nine members then would review the decision made by the Fifth Circuit justices. If the petition is denied, the decision made at the lower appellate level would stand and the case would return to federal district court in Austin.

The legal battle that would become Little v. Llano County erupted in 2021. Most of the books dealt with topics of race and sexuality and were included on the “Krause List.” Books by three other authors also were removed, including Maurice Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen” and two separate children’s series that have become collectively known as the “Butt and Fart Books.” The book removals spawned the filing of a federal lawsuit on April 25, 2022, by seven patrons who allege violations of their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The county has insisted that the books were removed as part of an ongoing “weeding” process by librarians.

In a 10-7 opinion handed down on May 23, a majority of justices for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed an earlier decision and sided with Llano County.

The News sent questions for this story to the Llano County Judge’s Office, which did not respond.

The newspaper will continue to follow this lawsuit.