Wyoming library director fired amid e book dispute wins $700,000 settlement

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — A former Wyoming library director who was fired amid an uproar over books with sexual content material and LGBTQ+ themes that some individuals complained had been inappropriate for children and who sought their removing from youth cabinets can be paid $700,000 after settling a lawsuit.

Terri Lesley was fired because the library system director in northeastern Wyoming’s Campbell County in 2023, two years into the e book dispute on the library in Gillette. Lesley sued final spring over her termination and reached the settlement with county officers Wednesday.

“I do really feel vindicated. It’s been a tough highway, however I’ll by no means remorse standing up for the First Modification,” Lesley mentioned.

A serious coal-mining space on the Western excessive plains, Campbell County is among the many most conservative areas in one of the conservative states.

Public officers there sided with the e book objectors and violated Lesley’s First Modification rights, Lesley claimed in her federal lawsuit in opposition to Campbell County, together with its fee and library board.

The county denied Lesley’s claims. Solely Lesley’s efficiency — not the dispute over the books — performed a job in her dismissal, the county argued in court docket paperwork.

A personal-practice legal professional employed by the county for the lawsuit, Patrick Holscher, and County Lawyer Nathan Henkes did not instantly return telephone messages Wednesday looking for remark.

The books objected to in Gillette included “This Guide is Homosexual” by Juno Dawson, “How Do You Make a Child” by Anna Fiske, “Doing It” by Hannah Witton, “Intercourse is a Humorous Phrase” by Corey Silverberg, and “Courting and Intercourse: A Information for the twenty first Century Teen Boy” by Andrew P. Smiler.

“We hope at the very least that it sends a message to different library districts, different states, different counties, that the First Modification is alive and robust and that our values in opposition to discrimination additionally stay alive and robust,” mentioned Lesley’s legal professional, Iris Halpern. “These are public entities, they’re authorities officers, they want to remember their constitutional obligations.”

Halpern and her agency, Rathod Mohamedbhai in Denver, have supported fired library staff elsewhere lately. Underneath the settlement settlement, Lesley is dropping her lawsuit, although a separate lawsuit she has filed in opposition to three people who contested the books will proceed.

The U.S. Equal Employment Alternative Fee, the federal company tasked with imposing discrimination legal guidelines, allowed the lawsuit in opposition to the county officers to be filed primarily based on an earlier EEOC grievance filed by Lesley.