Moms for Liberty has filed a federal free-speech lawsuit against Yolo County, California, after being shut down by librarians for “misgendering” transgender athletes at a forum on fairness and safety in women’s sports.
The Aug. 20 event at the Mary L. Stephens branch library in Davis was canceled minutes after it had started over objections to former college athlete Sophia Lorey referring to male-born athletes who identify as female as “men.”
The speakers, who included advocates for women’s sports and parental rights, were also shouted down by protesters invited in by library staff “with the expectation that the protesters would disrupt the disapproved speech,” said the Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative legal advocacy group representing Moms for Liberty.
“Public officials cannot shut down speech they don’t like,” said ADF senior counsel Tyson Langhofer. “The organizers of this event have every right to express their concern regarding men in women’s sports, and library staff wrongly shut down the event. We urge the court to uphold the constitutionally protected freedoms of our clients.”
The ADF and the Institute for Free Speech filed the lawsuit Monday on behalf of Moms for Liberty-Yolo County and other groups that participated in the Davis forum in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California in Sacramento.
The lawsuit asks the court for an injunction blocking the library from enforcing rules such as requiring people to be treated with “respect,” saying the behavior code has been weaponized to censor viewpoints with which the library disagrees.
Shortly after the program began, library regional manager D. Scott Love, one of the defendants, told Ms. Lorey to leave or he would “shut the entire program down,” telling her “you were misgendering.”
“Our policy talks about treating people with respect, and if you are misgendering somebody, that is not respectful,” Mr. Love said, as shown on video. He told the estimated 65 attendees to leave shortly thereafter, the lawsuit says.
Public libraries have become First Amendment battlefields in recent years as conservative groups seek to reserve meeting rooms for forums and presentations that conflict with the increasingly woke agenda of staffers and the American Library Association.
The Yolo County Library put up resistance to several events hosted by Moms for Liberty’s local affiliate prior to the flap over the women’s sports forum, as shown in internal emails included as lawsuit exhibits.
For example, library regional supervisor Crista Cannariato sought to coordinate with an LGBTQ group that previously hosted a drag queen story hour on countering a Brave Books Family Hour hosted Feb. 25 at the Stephens branch, citing concerns about the group’s “anti-trans agenda.”
“We are planning to have LGBTQIA+ affirming bibliographies and a display in the library. I have also reached out to the UCD LGBTQIA+ Resource Center about providing a program/workshop in the near future,” said Ms. Cannariato. “The date of the program is February 25, so we don’t have a lot of lead time to prepare, but we would love to have some queer-positive programming scheduled for around the time of the program.”
She also said the library “will be looking at how we can strengthen that and our code of conduct in the future to better protect the community against potential hate speech. I have found some good examples from other libraries.”
One of the activists on the email was Anoosh Jorjorian, who turned up the next month at a Moms for Liberty library presentation of “Affirmation Generation,” a documentary critical of “gender-affirming care” featuring detransitioners, or formerly transgender people.
“During the event, Anoosh Jorjorian stood in the front of the room, next to the screen and held up signs protesting the film,” said the lawsuit. “Jorjorian’s signs included the messages ‘Transphobia = hate,’ ‘Trans is Natural,’ and ‘Fact-Free Fear-Mongering Propaganda.’ Jorjorian wrote new signs, rolled her eyes, and laughed dismissively for approximately 60 minutes of the nearly 90-minute film.”
Ms. Jorjorian refused to leave when asked by organizers. The library’s code of conduct requires that patrons “speak and act in a manner that doesn’t disturb others.”
Head librarian Diana Lopez responded to a complaint afterward saying that she had spoken with Ms. Jorjorian about “the importance of not disrupting scheduled events of other groups,” but the activist has suffered no consequences, the lawsuit said.
The Washington Times has reached out to the Yolo County Library for comment.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.