Unlawful Orders: How Libraries Became the Front Line in the Fight for Democracy
beSpacific 2025-05-01
Mostly Lawful Substack – Kyle K. Courtney [Disclaimer: I am a lawyer who represents libraries and works closely with state library systems. I also have strong opinions about coffee (pro) and unconstitutional executive orders (con). Views expressed here are my own — powered by caffeine, guided by constitutional law, and, according to the fine print, occasionally fueled by righteous indignation.]
So here we are again — libraries as one of the last vanguards of real democratic values. When political power leans too hard, when laws are bent or broken, when public institutions are treated like disposable relics, somehow it’s librarians — and the people who believe in and support them — who hold the line. This time, the threat isn’t just budget cuts or culture wars. It’s an executive order aimed at dismantling the very agency (IMLS!) that supports libraries and museums across the country. An order that, if allowed to stand, would not only gut essential community services, but bulldoze straight through the Constitution’s most basic guarantees. In Mostly Lawful this week, let’s talk about what’s happening, why twenty states are suing to stop it, and why this fight is about a lot more than federal grants. It’s about whether we still believe in a government built on laws, and whether we still have the collective will to defend it.
The local library is usually a place for quiet reading, not high-stakes legal drama. Yet in a twist few expected, twenty state attorneys general have marched into federal court to stop President Donald Trump from shuttering the nation’s library and museum agency by executive fiat. In March, Trump signed an order to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) – the small but mighty federal agency that funnels support to 125,000+ public, school, academic and special libraries across the country – along with a handful of other small agencies. The states’ lawsuit argues this move isn’t just an attack on libraries and museums – it’s an attack on 1) the Constitution’s separation of powers, 2) Congress’s power of the purse, and 3) the President’s duty to faithfully execute the laws. In a country that built grand libraries as temples of knowledge, the fight to save this particular federal agency has become a high-profile battle for constitutional governance…”