SEYMOUR, Ind. — A federal judge ruled a library in Seymour, Indiana violated a man's constitutional rights after banning him for life from a library after he left an anti-Trump poem.
In November 2020, Richard England, 68, left his poem, titled "The Red Mean," in a basket on the circulation desk, which contained masks for customers to take if they needed one. He had originally taken it to the Jackson County Public Library for a friend, but they were not at the library at the time.
England later received a call from the library letting him know he had been banned for life and would be arrested for trespassing if he returned.
In the court's decision, it was noted that the library staff was "confused and scared" by the poem, and that concern was increased due to the climate around the 2020 election. The library argued it amounted to a real threat and that would allow for the banning of England.
Judge Tanya Walton Pratt found the poem was a political hyperbole, not a threat, and ruled the library had to remove its ban of England. Pratt said England's First and Fourteenth Amendment rights had been violated.
England is allowed to return to the Jackson County Public Library in Seymour immediately, and he is to have all of his library privileges restored.