Louisiana librarian and freedom to read advocate Amanda Jones is ending 2024 with a major legal victory. On December 27, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that Jones’s 2022 defamation case against two local men who accused her of pushing pornography to children can continue. In a 4-2 ruling, the court found that an appeals court erred in denying Jones’s appeal based on an apparently missed deadline.
The closely watched case began in July 2022 after Jones, a school librarian, spoke up against a bid to pull a number of mostly LGBTQ-themed books from her hometown public library in Livingston Parish, La. In response, she was attacked online by two men who accused her of grooming children and fighting to make pornography available to kids. Jones then fought back by filing a defamation suit against two men who publicly accused her online.
In a setback, Judge Erika Sledge of Louisiana’s 21st Judicial District Court dismissed the case in September 2022 before arguments ever reached a jury, holding that Jones was a limited public figure—a designation that raises the bar for proving defamation—and finding that the statements against Jones did not rise to the level of defamation. Sledge reaffirmed her decision in November 2022. And in January 2024, the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeals denied Jones’s appeal on a technicality, finding that she had missed the deadline to file her appeal.
But in a major reversal, the Louisiana Supreme Court in its December 27 ruling remanded the case back to the appeals court with an order to hear the case on the merits. And in more good news for Jones, one of the justices filed a concurrence setting out a straightforward read on the case.
Acknowledging that Jones’s case contains "some very specific allegations," Justice Jefferson D. Hughes III said that the burden at trial now rests squarely with the defendants. "Defendants have publicly stated that plaintiff, 'promot[ed] pornography and erotic contents [sic] to kids’ and ‘advocat[ed] teaching anal sex to 11 year-olds,' " Hughes wrote. "If plaintiff did not do these acts, she cannot prove a negative. The burden will be on defendants to prove that plaintiff did in fact do the acts they have publicly accused her of. If defendants can prove that plaintiff did the things they claim, then the truth is a defense. If they cannot, they have defamed the plaintiff."
Notably, Jones is not seeking significant damages in the case—just $1 and an apology. "This is not about revenge, or monetary gain, but about standing up for what is right," Jones explained in a July 2024 post on her website. "We teach our children to report and speak out against bullying, and that is what I am doing. I am doing this on behalf of myself, and on behalf of the countless other librarians across the country who have been targeted and harassed simply for standing up for intellectual freedom and standing up for our school and public libraries."
Meanwhile, in late November, Jones filed another defamation lawsuit, this time in federal court against a New Jersey man, Dan Kleinman, who authors a blog called Safe Libraries. In a November 26 complaint, Jones accused Kleinman of defamation and false light for accusing Jones of pushing pornography and sexualizing children. "There is perhaps no statement more injurious to an elementary educator than that they 'sexualize' children," reads the complaint, which includes numerous examples from Kleinman’s blog and social media posts.
In a post on her website, Jones explained what motivated the suit against Kleinman. "He has emailed my place of work, he has emailed me, he has traveled to Louisiana on the invitation of my local haters, he tags my legislators and school in his false posts, and he frightens me," Jones wrote. "I should not have to live like this—worried about the next lie and attempt to tarnish my name, worried about him continuing to show up to events I am at, or worried for the safety of myself and my family."
Jones, School Library Journal’s 2021 Co-Librarian of the Year, was was awarded the John Phillip Immroth Memorial Award by the ALA in 2023, which honors those who show personal courage in defending intellectual freedom. And in August, Bloomsbury published her memoir That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America, which tells the personal story of her fight for the freedom to read, and against the men who targeted her.
