The Alabama Public Library Service Board passed an amendment to keep materials deemed “inappropriate” out of the children’s sections of libraries and postponed a decision regarding Fairhope Public Libraries funding on Thursday.
The current APLS rules state “children’s library sections must not have any material considered inappropriate for children.” The amendment now defines inappropriate material as anything “regarding “transgender procedures, gender ideology or the concept of more than two biological genders.”
The decision came after a public comment period with over 8,000 submitted letters, 80% of which supported the code change, according to the board.
Two of the five members of the board voted against the change, Angelia Stokes, representative of District 2, and Ron Snider, representative of District 1.
“With 5 million people in Alabama, it’s ludicrous to say that statistically this is what Alabama wants,” Snider said.
Around 20 Alabamians attended the APLS board meeting, 10 of whom spoke rejecting the code change.
“Most of the people of Alabama have not asked for this latest library-fixated assault on the LGBTQ community,” said Jim Vickrey, former president of the University of Montevallo and a member of Read Freely Alabama. “Because it’s their children and children of friends and relatives you’re attacking.”
RFA is a volunteer organization that works against censorship in public libraries in the state, according to its website.
John Wahl, chairman of the APLS board and chairman of the Alabama Republican Party, authored the code change that passed. He suggested removing the phrase, “positively depicts transgender procedures” to do less harm to the transgender community. He said the previous wording would only allow negative depictions of the community, causing an imbalance.
The new version of the code also clarifies that both youth and adult library cards must be offered to patrons of libraries. All minors must receive a restricted card, unless a parent or legal guardian provides written consent otherwise.
Wahl said that though this would negatively affect libraries that don’t have the funds to support a more extensive library card system, the “bad actors,” referring to the Fairhope Public Library System, “forced” him to take this step.
Autumn Zellner, a librarian at the Fairhope Public Library, said the library has complied with the APLS board’s requests to remove “sexually explicit” materials from the children’s section.
She added that the board told Fairhope it would not give away funds while the library was under review and that the board has redistributed the money.
Wahl confirmed this, saying that Fairhope lost its funding when it did not comply with the board’s requests by June 30.
He proposed a motion that would postpone the board’s decision about Fairhope’s 2026 funding until after he read the seventeen books that parents wanted removed from the library system’s children’s section.
Snider said the library system reviewed the books and moved about half of them to the adult section.
“They told us that two board members read each book and reported to us,” Snider said. “Some of those books, they did move, while some they thought were appropriately shelved.”
Wahl said he now plans to read the books because the Fairhope Library asked him to read them before he made a decision about their funding.
“I did not want to read these books,” Wahl said. “The only reason I am doing it is because someone affected by a policy challenged me.”
He added that he takes the challenge “very seriously.”
The board debated postponing its decision because Wahl had not finished reading, but only Stokes and Snider said they wanted to restore the Fairhope Library’s funding.
“If a library is trying to do the right thing, trying to work with local patrons and trying to follow state code, they will never hear me trying to put restrictions on them,” Wahl said.
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