NC County Fires Entire Library Board for Refusing Trans Book Ban

In Randolph County, North Carolina, defending one children’s book just cost an entire library board its job.

County commissioners voted 3–2 this month to dissolve the Randolph County Public Library Board of Trustees after the board refused to remove Call Me Max, a picture book about a transgender boy, from its children’s shelves. Critics say the move is an alarming escalation in the fast-growing war over what young readers are allowed to see.

One Trans Character, One Complaint, Entire Board Removed

The fight began in October, when a parent complained about Call Me Max, written by Kyle Lukoff. The book follows a child who asks to be called a name that better matches his gender identity. After a review, the library board voted 5–2 to keep the book where it was, warning that removal would be a “slippery slope” toward censorship, according to reporting from Truthout.

Board member Betty Armfield stressed that libraries must “serve all sides of issues” and that it is “parents’ responsibility to choose what they believe are appropriate books for their children,” not politicians’. That stance directly clashed with Randolph County commissioners, who argued that the book was “planting” the idea of being trans in children’s minds and cited the debunked notion of “social contagion.”

Instead of accepting the trustees’ professional judgment, commissioners simply wiped the slate clean, voting to dissolve the board and start over with new appointees. PEN America’s Freedom to Read program director Kasey Meehan called the decision “a pretty dramatic response to wanting to have diverse and inclusive books on shelves,” in comments highlighted by the New York Post.

Part of a National Crackdown on Trans and Queer Books

Lukoff, whose work has become a recurring flashpoint in book-ban fights, said on Instagram that he felt “so terrible” for the community that just lost a board willing to defend its collection. The Randolph County showdown lands in the middle of a nationwide spike in efforts to pull LGBTQ-inclusive books from schools and public libraries. PEN America recently named 50 of the most frequently banned titles, many of them centering queer or trans characters.

Neighboring states are moving in lockstep. In South Carolina’s Greenville County, families have sued after librarians were ordered to remove or relocate dozens of LGBTQ-themed books, arguing the policy violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments, according to Spectrum News. Alabama’s state library board has gone further, pushing a rule that would effectively ban any book that “positively” depicts transgender people from youth sections, per the Associated Press.

We’re also seeing the legal screws tighten. In Tennessee, library systems have temporarily shut down branches or rewritten policies to comply with new state-level directives around “gender ideology,” while a judge recently allowed Rutherford County school book bans to stand for now even as lawsuits continue. PEN America and other advocates warn that these local decisions, taken together, amount to a slow-motion rewriting of what counts as acceptable reading for young people.

Why This Matters to Readers Far Beyond Randolph County

For book lovers, the Randolph County vote is a test of who gets to shape the shelves: trained librarians or partisan officials. As scholar Rudine Sims Bishop has long argued, when children cannot see themselves accurately in books, they learn “a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part”—a point echoed in PEN America’s recent reports and in coverage of librarians under fire amid rising LGBTQ book bans.

Randolph County’s trustees chose to keep one quiet, 32-page story about a trans kid on the shelf. In response, they lost their jobs. Whether readers see that as community accountability or outright censorship will help determine what kinds of stories today’s kids are able to find tomorrow.