Ex-librarian gets $225K settlement
At a Highland Lakes Democratic Women’s meeting, former Kingsland head librarian Suzette Baker held up a copy of ‘Gender Queer,’ one of the books she was asked to remove from the library’s shelves. She refused to do so and was subsequently fired. Staff photo by Dakota Morrissiey
Former Kingsland head librarian Suzette Baker reached a $225,000 settlement with Llano County on March 24 in a wrongful termination lawsuit she filed a year ago.
Llano County will pay Baker the money through the Texas Association of Counties litigation assistance program, not county tax dollars. As part of the settlement, the former librarian agreed to never again seek employment with Llano County, including in its library system.
Baker was fired from her Kingsland Library job in 2022 after refusing to remove several books shelves at the request of county and library system leadership. Many of those books contained racial and LGBTQ+ themes and were deemed controversial by the county.
“It’s cathartic in the fact that this part of it is over, but it’s one battle in the war on the ban on books,” Baker told DailyTrib.com following the settlement announcement. “When I first started this, I knew there was a chance they were going to fire me. They chose to ignore the law, and they chose to fire me for standing up for it.”
Baker and her legal defense asserted that her refusal to remove a long list of books from library shelves was protected by the First Amendment, making her 2022 termination a violation of her constitutional right. She filed a lawsuit against the county in March 2024. News of a potential settlement in the case came to light earlier this month.
“The significant financial settlement reflects the unconstitutionality of book segregation and banning efforts and the public’s ongoing displeasure with discrimination committed by government officials,” reads a media release from Rathod Mohamedbhai Attorneys At Law, Baker’s legal defense. “It further serves as a reminder that retaliation against administrators and librarians who speak out and otherwise oppose censorship and prejudice is against the law.”
Llano County leadership remains steadfast that Baker is wrong in her claim, but in partnership with the Texas Association of Counties, chose to move forward with the settlement. TAC represents and protects its members in an array of legal matters.
“The County wholly denies Ms. Baker’s claims about the reasons for her termination and was prepared to prove it in Court,” reads a statement to DailyTrib.com from Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham. “However, the County understands TAC’s decision to resolve the case for this amount in order to avoid the extensive attorney’s fees and expenses of continuing this litigation, which would have exceeded the settlement amount, and avoiding the disruption to County affairs that the ongoing litigation would have caused. We are glad to put this behind us and focus our energy on the important government services that Llano County provides, including but not limited to public and emergency services, maintaining our county road system, and offering vital rural health care to our citizens.”
Baker spoke on her experience during a Highland Lakes Democratic Women meeting Thursday in Marble Falls. She lives in Buchanan Dam and now works in a local hardware store, but is also touring the country with a documentary film crew for “The Librarians,” which features stories of censorship from her and other librarians.
BEYOND BAKER’S SUIT
Another civil lawsuit regarding the library system, Little et al. v. Llano County et al., was filed April 2022 and alleges violations of First and 14th amendment rights with the removal of 17 books from Llano County Library System shelves and its online app. Read the latest on this case and see a list of books central to both cases in this September 2024 story.
2 thoughts on “Ex-librarian gets $225K settlement”
Comments are closed.
Gender Queer was never in the Llano Public Library and is not one of the books involved in the lawsuit. However, Overdrive, the library’s online interlibrary checkout system, was terminated because of the possibility that minors might access LGBTQ materials despite built-in parental controls
Kingsland librarian Suzette Baker is a heroine. I support her stance in upholding the Constitution.