Cromaine District Library Board voted to relocate more than 160 challenged LGBTQ-themed books to its adult section without review

On May 21, 2026, the board of trustees of the Cromaine District Library in Hartland Township, Livingston County, Michigan, voted 4-1 to relocate more than 160 challenged books — a majority of them LGBTQ-themed — from the children's and teen collections to the adult section. The vote came after a year-long challenge process in which 12 patrons submitted 218 challenges, many copied from an online list, objecting to an "LGBTQ lifestyle" and alleging "sexual exploitation of children"; the challengers acknowledged they had not read the titles. Library Director Sarah Neidert had reviewed every challenged book and declined to remove any, relocating a small number and labeling others, but the challengers appealed her determinations to the board.

Before the vote, the board majority — trustees Bill Bolin, Jeannine Gogoleski, Dawn Smith, Becky Basley, and Armstrong — rewrote the library's collection-development policy with assistance from Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal advocacy group the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as an anti-LGBTQ hate group. The revision removed the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights and created a new board appeals process empowering trustees to overturn the director's decisions. The library's own counsel was never asked to review the rewrite, despite having warned that restricting access to the challenged materials would place the library on "shaky constitutional ground." The appeals process required trustees to read each book and cite specific sexually explicit content before relocating it.

After a year, the board had completed only 58 of the 218 appeals and, at the May 21 meeting, the majority declined to continue. A motion to accept the director's determinations failed, and a subsequent motion to move all remaining challenged books to the adult section passed 4-1, with Treasurer Nancy Rosso opposed. Bolin, who had helped organize the original book challenge, participated in judging the same titles. Neidert later said her "training and instincts" told her not to move the books but that she complied to keep her job.

Updates

2026-06-27 — ACLU of Michigan warned board of First Amendment violations [1]

On June 27, 2026, the ACLU of Michigan's LGBTQ+ Project attorney Jay Kaplan sent the board a letter stating that its decision to override its own review process and relocate the titles raised "serious due process and First Amendment issues" and amounted to "unconstitutional censorship," citing Sund v. City of Wichita Falls, in which a federal court held that moving books to a library's adult section unlawfully burdened access.

2026-07-15 — PEN America urged board to reverse the relocation [2, 5]

On July 15, 2026, PEN America joined the ACLU of Michigan in criticizing the board, with its Freedom to Read program director Kasey Meehan calling the reshelving part of a "rising atmosphere of censorship" and urging the board to return the reclassified titles to the children's and young-adult sections.