Saline County, Arkansas has agreed to pay $275,000 to Patty Hector, the county library’s former executive director, to settle her lawsuit claiming that county officials violated her free speech rights by firing her in October 2023 after she publicly opposed an April 2023 resolution from the county’s all-Republican Quorum Court to remove LGBTQ+ books from the children’s section of the Saline County Library. The settlement was announced last Thursday.
In April 2023, the Saline County Quorum Court recommended that local libraries “relocate materials that are not subject matter or age appropriate for children, due to their sexual content or imagery, to an area that is not accessible to children.” The court did this to preemptively comply with Act 372, legislation (later signed into law) that allows city and county governing bodies to charge librarians and booksellers with a Class A criminal misdemeanor if they distribute materials deemed “obscene” or “harmful” to minors. The law doesn’t define these terms and was blocked by courts from going into effect until last July.
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Hector spoke at the court’s public convenings in May 2023, saying she had no intention of following the resolution. She also said that no one had used the available processes to challenge specific titles in the library, The Benton Courier reported. She said the court’s resolution had made her library staff subject to being “dehumanized” by online harassment from “fanatics” who referred to staff members as “pedophiles” and “groomers.” She said staff members feared walking to their cars at night and said critics specifically wanted to remove children’s books with gay characters and those perceived as being “anti-white.”
“There is nothing wrong with those books. It’s not illegal to be gay or trans,” she told the court.
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At the time, David Gibson, chairman of the Saline County Republican Committee, claimed, “The library staff are intentionally pushing X-rated books on children,” and said people who opposed the court’s resolution “support pornography in the children’s section.”
Meanwhile, former library marketing coordinator Jordan Reynolds said, according to Arkansas Advocate, “The resolution is saying that [for] these kids — though they’re different from us, different from our straight, white community — if they don’t find themselves in books, it’s because they’re immoral, perverse, and disgusting.”
Saline County Judge Matt Brumley subsequently fired Hector after the aforementioned court gave him power to do so. By February 2025, Hector filed a lawsuit alleging that Brumley and the Saline County Quorum Court unconstitutionally used their power to retaliate against her, violating her free speech rights in the process.
“Hector’s termination, and the ordinance ensuring it, was punishment for her opposition to censorship,” wrote her attorneys, Jess Askew of the Kutak Rock law firm and John Williams of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arkansas.
In an ACLU press release, Williams wrote that Hector’s firing “send[s] a chilling message to public servants who dare to stand up for their values and the rights of their communities.”
“Standing up against censorship should never cost someone their job,” Williams wrote. “Ms. Hector was fired for defending the right to read freely and for refusing to let political pressure dictate the operation of a public library. Retaliation against her for speaking out on these critical issues is not only unconstitutional — it’s an attack on the principles of free expression and access to information that public libraries stand for.”
In its settlement of her lawsuit, the county will now pay $225,000 in damages and $50,000 in legal fees from the Association of Arkansas Counties Risk Management Fund, The Arkansas Advocate reported.
Brumley said he disagreed with Hector’s allegations and was ready for a trial (which was set to start this week), but “ultimately determined the responsible decision is to resolve this matter rather than spend years in a costly legal battle at the expense of the taxpayers.”
Hector said she hopes the settlement will reassure other librarians and public servants of their constitutional rights.
“Standing up for the freedom to read cost me a job and a career I loved, but I never believed that staying silent was the answer,” Hector said. “Libraries belong to everyone, and librarians should be able to serve their communities according to professional standards without fearing political retaliation.”
Statewide, librarians are seeking guidance on how to implement the state’s aforementioned book-banning law. The Arkansas Department of Education is also considering new rules to block public libraries’ funding if they don’t enact policies to block minors aged 16 or younger from checking out materials depicting sexual contact and behavior.
In November, Saline County residents will vote on whether to cut one-third of the operating budget for their counties’ libraries.
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