Rutherford County school librarians’ phones started buzzing with traded messages of fear and frustration as soon as the central office email directive arrived on an otherwise routine Tuesday morning:

150 book titles had to be removed from the shelves – or tracked down and taken from kids who had borrowed them.

Immediately.

“Librarians had to drop everything they were doing: no more checking books in and out, no answering questions or assisting with research, not able to do the jobs they love to do. Some even had to shut down their library for the day,” said Elizabeth Shepherd, librarian at the Discovery School in Murfreesboro who described the frantic text message exchanges among fellow librarians that ensued.

“Instead, they had to make their first priority book removal, not just taking them off the shelves but also taking them out of the hands of students, a process that is literally heartbreaking as a librarian.”

The books were removed without formal review by school board members, librarians, teachers or parents less than 24 hours after an emailed request to Rutherford County Director of Schools James Sullivan from a school board member.

“Per state law, here is a list of 150 books that have been challenged for sexually explicit content,” read the Nov. 11 email from board member Francis Rosales. “Please review the attached documents for violations related to sexually explicit material in school libraries,” the email said.

Rosales cited newly enacted Tennessee legislation that bars books that contain nudity and descriptions of “sexual excitement, sexual conduct, excess violence or sadomasochistic abuse” and attached “pages of concern” for each title.

“It was partly because of accusations that we were having those types of books in our school libraries, so I took it upon myself to do this,” Rosales told the Lookout on Thursday. “My goal is if we are accused of having these books we should tackle this now.”

But the speed with which the school district pulled books that include American classics such as “A Clockwork Orange’’ and “Catch-22,” along with LGBTQ-theme titles including, “Queer: The Ultimate LGBT Guide for Teens,” created a firestorm that spilled into public view at a Nov. 14 board meeting.

School board member Katie Darby accused Rosales of including books to be banned that “have no business being on there” and “wasting people’s time.” Rosales questioned whether Darby supported having sexually explicit materials available to children. The board chair gavelled to a close the testy exchange that followed.

Law source of ‘chaos and confusion’

Tennessee’s newly enacted school library statute, in effect since July 1, expands upon a 2022 law requiring school libraries to regularly review book collections to ensure only age-appropriate reading materials are available to students.

The new law, which received unanimous support from Tennessee Republican lawmakers, further defined objectionable books as those containing sexually explicit passages, nudity and excess violence but failed to define what those terms mean.

The vagueness of the law’s language has drawn sharp criticism from educators and civil liberties advocates who warn the legislation could be interpreted to encompass a vast range of children and young adult books.

“Public Chapter 782 is the source of this chaos and confusion for school librarians in Tennessee, as it creates a way for unchallenged books to be removed from the shelves, does not take into account the age or maturity level of the student, and it encourages self-censorship,” the Tennessee Association of School Librarians said in a statement.

The association said the law has put educators in the position of deciding on whether books meet new “legal standards that have not been adequately explained by the State of Tennessee in the form of guidance.”

As a result, public school officials have requested an attorney general’s opinion to help them comply with the law. Districts, including Rutherford County, have deferred decisions on how to create new guidelines to review challenged books until they receive that decision. A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office declined to comment on the status of any opinion Friday.

Conservative website cited in state book bans

In the meantime, some school districts have begun to proactively remove books that could violate the new law, relying largely on a single website created by a Florida resident and former member of the conservative parents’ rights group, Moms for Liberty, that rates books on their sexual content, violence and explicit language.

Last month, Wilson County, Tennessee removed about 400 books from its public school libraries relying on book reviews by the website, BookLooks.org. Among the removed titles are those by the authors Toni Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut and Dr. Seuss.

Williamson School Board member balks at “age appropriate” book law

School officials in Wilson County then shared their list of banned books with educators in Clarksville-Montgomery County School System (CMCSS), prompting pushback by some local parents and educators against removing books.

CMCSS officials later clarified the list is being used as a “resource” as the system weighs which books may be banned.

Rosales told the Lookout she had also relied on the Wilson County book list and Booklook.org for help in compiling her list of 150 questionable books.

Rosales compared the 400 books Wilson County educators have pulled from library shelves to book ratings by BookLooks.org, she said. She then compared books the website rated poorly for explicit content, expletives and violence to books available in Rutherford County school libraries to arrive at her list, she said.

BookLooks.org has been the source for multiple book bans across the nation, according to Tasslin Magnusson, senior adviser to the Freedom To Read Team at Pen America, a First Amendment advocacy group, which has tracked more than 10,000 book bans in public schools in the 2023-2024 school year.

“It’s a dirty look at the books,” Magnusson said. “Even the scenes they quote are often out of context. They don’t evaluate books as a whole or work under any guiding principles.”

In Rutherford County, librarians are currently reviewing each of the 150 books being challenged, according to a district spokesperson.

Librarians will compare book content to the language of the state law to make recommendations on which books should be permanently removed by the end of the year, the spokesperson said. The district has authorized $1,000 in compensation to librarians conducting the reviews.

The school board will then vote on retaining or removing individual books. Until those votes are cast, the books will remain unavailable to students.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and X.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Accusing Johnson City officials of victim-shaming, a group of women suing the city and multiple police officers over shoddy or corrupt investigations pushed back against public statements suggesting they deserve blame for being victims of an alleged serial rapist.

“My name is Anya and I am here today because a predator was allowed to take advantage of people in vulnerable situations far longer than should ever have happened,” said one of eight women who gathered in a Knoxville hotel meeting room to speak publicly about the case for the first time.

“I was certainly not at fault. People were scared to report to police because they had heard police were doing nothing, or worse,” she said.

The women, referred to as “Jane Does” in the lawsuit, agreed to be photographed but not identified by their full names at a news conference on Tuesday organized by their attorneys, where they took turns responding to remarks made about the case by Johnson City Manager Cathy Ball.

Ball has said the victims could be, to some degree, “at fault” for their assaults because they “consumed and partook of illegal drugs.”

The women’s lawsuit, first filed last June, centers on allegations that Johnson City police knew of multiple allegations that local businessman Sean Williams drugged then sexually assaulted women — but failed to act, even after police discovered a handwritten list on Williams’ nightstand scrawled with the first names of 23 women, under the word “raped.”

Williams was arrested in North Carolina last April, where he fled to escape illegal weapons charges in Johnson City. After his arrest, local police discovered images and videos on his electronic devices of 52 women, who appeared to be drugged while being sexually assaulted inside Williams’ downtown Johnson City condo. The devices also contained images of two children being assaulted, court records said.

“I am one of the 52 women whom Sean Williams sexually assaulted while taking sexually explicit photos of me,” one of the Jane Does said Tuesday. “My name also appears on the ‘raped’ list, which the Johnson City Police Department recovered Sean Williams apartment…The people in my community who are supposed to protect me and the other women you see here today failed us.”

One woman spoke of being offered only a beer before her assault, but learned afterwards she had unknowingly been slipped benzodiazepines; another spoke of struggling with addiction at the time of her assault. “That should not matter,” one Jane Doe said firmly. “That does not mean it’s all right for them to be raped or that they deserve zero empathy or no accountability.”

“Survivors deserve to be treated with respect,” another Jane Doe said. “For a woman in Cathy Ball’s position of power to say publicly that victims are at fault when we didn’t have the ability to defend ourselves…it was a punch in the gut.”

Vanessa Baeher-Jones, an attorney with California-based Advocates for Survivors of Abuse who is representing the women, called Ball’s statements an effort to “turn the focus of this case away from Sean Williams, a serial rapist, and the Johnson City Police Department’s corruption and instead to publicly shame the survivors of his crimes.”

Ball said Wednesday that city officials are “committed to transparency and want our community members to have access to all the facts.”

“Protecting victims and the community is the top priority of the Johnson City Police Department,” a statement from Ball said. Ball also encouraged victims to report crimes to law enforcement.

Lawyers for the women are now seeking class action status for the lawsuit, to include not only Williams’ victims but all sexual assault victims whose cases were mishandled by Johnson City police. The original lawsuit, first representing nine women who said they were assaulted by Sean Williams, expanded to a tenth plaintiff who said she was assaulted as a teen by another assailant, but Johnson City Police similarly failed to investigate her case.

Attorneys for the women — who also include Brentwood based attorney Heather Moore Collins with HMC Civil Rights Law and San Francisco attorney Elizabeth Kramer — have now alleged a broader corruption scheme involving kickbacks from Williams to police officers and intimidation of witnesses, including a woman who spoke to the FBI in 2022 about being raped by Williams

Months later, she was assaulted and arrested by Johnson City Police officers, who planted a small bag of cocaine in her backpack, court filings allege. The woman was then evicted by Johnson City Housing Authority, an action that the lawsuit alleges was part of an orchestrated campaign by Johnson City Police to retaliate against and intimidate the woman.

A separate lawsuit brought by former Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Kateri Dahl alleges the Johnson City Police Department, either incompetently or corruptly, failed to take a serial rapist off the streets, then ended her contract as police-federal prosecutor liaison as she pursued the case. That case remains ongoing.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.

A lingering legal battle that was poised to settle this summer, leading to a clearer pathway for tens of thousands of Tennesseans to restore their voting rights, has instead reignited into a contentious court fight with no certain outcome ahead of the next presidential election.

One in five Black voting-age Tennesseans lacks the right to vote due to a past criminal conviction — likely the highest rate of African-American disenfranchisement in the nation, according to the Sentencing Project. Overall, nearly 10% of the Tennessee electorate — 470,000 people — have lost their right to vote due to convictions.

In a lawsuit filed in December 2020, the Tennessee Conference of the NAACP and five residents denied the right to vote alleged Tennessee officials failed to follow state laws that allow individuals to legally restore their voting rights after serving their sentences and completing parole. Instead, the state implemented inaccessible and opaque processes that impede legal pathways for restoring rights, the lawsuit claimed.

Close to settling key claims in the case over the summer — potentially ahead of high profile local elections in Nashville, Memphis and for state office — attorneys for the state abruptly broke off talks in late July, catching lawyers for the NAACP by surprise, legal filings show. Then, on August 2, lawyers for the Tennessee Attorney General filed motions asking a judge to reject the claims entirely.

Tennessee Supreme Court rules in felony voting rights case

“The Elections Division, TDOC, and Governor’s office had the opportunity this summer to create accessible, transparent, and uniform procedures to allow the over 470,000 disenfranchised Tennesseans a fair shot at getting their voting rights restored and rejoining their communities as full citizens,” Blair Bowie, an attorney representing the NAACP with the DC-based Campaign Legal Center, said Friday.

“Instead, they blew up the voting rights restoration system entirely and imposed effectively permanent disenfranchisement on July 21,” she said.

A spokesperson for the Tennessee Attorney General did not respond to emailed questions on Friday.

The breakdown in the federal case came shortly after a June 29 ruling by the Tennessee Supreme Court against Ernest Falls, who was denied the right to vote in Tennessee in 2020 after receiving clemency in Virginia for a decades-old crime.

The Supreme Court ruled that Falls, also represented by the Campaign Legal Center, was required to show he had paid all outstanding court costs, restitution and child support obligations in Virginia to establish his voting rights — in addition to proof of the Virginia clemency.

Secretary of State Mark Goins then issued a memo that incorporated expanded requirements for all state residents seeking to restore their voting rights — regardless of where their conviction took place. In addition to the process of demonstrating they, too, had paid court costs and other financial obligations related to their crime, in-state residents must now show they also “have been pardoned by a Governor, U.S. President, or other appropriate authority of a state or have had their full rights of citizenship restored as prescribed by law.”

The memo wasn’t shared with attorneys for the NAACP who had been involved with them in settlement negotiations for months, legal filings said.

“Plaintiffs learned from public reporting that Defendant Goins had that day issued guidance to county election officials changing his interpretation of the State’s requirements for individuals with felony convictions to restore their voting rights,” court records said.

In seeking a ruling dismissing major elements of the case, state lawyers have argued in motions for summary judgement that the five individuals names in the suit lack standing in court.

Tennessee does have a process in place for restoration of rights, one that provides a pathway to restoring rights while preserving election integrity, they argued.

“Tennessee does not reject all voter registration forms on which the applicant affirmed that they have a felony conviction,” the state’s filings said. “Moreover, Tennessee’s practice is rationally related to its legitimate interest in combatting voter fraud, safeguarding voter confidence, and ensuring accurate record keeping.”

The Sentencing Project’s national voting rights study found that that 3,415 Tennessee voting-age citizens have been granted Certificates of Restoration since 2016 — fewer than 1% of those with prior felony convictions estimated to be eligible to vote under Tennessee law.

The NAACP lawsuit argues that the current administration of voting right restoration certificates violate the U.S. Constitution’s due process and the equal protection rights.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.