From the Arkansas Advocate:
A former West Arkansas public library director sued Crawford County and a member of the library’s board of trustees Friday, alleging defamation and breach of contract in a years-long squabble over the availability and placement of certain books on library shelves.
Deidre Grzymala states in her legal complaint that library board member Tammara Hamby defamed her in violation of an agreement between Grzymala and the county upon her resignation as Crawford County Library System director in February 2023. The agreement said Grzymala and the county would refrain from “criticizing, denigrating or disparaging each other.”
At an April 18 library board meeting, Hamby claimed Grzymala was responsible for a First Amendment lawsuit against the county, the library board and others over the library’s segregation of children’s books with LGBTQ+ themes into “social sections.” Three parents sued over the segregation in May 2023, and a federal judge ruled in their favor in September 2024.
The Crawford County Quorum Court voted unanimously at a special meeting in April to accept the library board’s offer to pay nearly $113,000 in legal fees, ending months of dispute over who would foot the bill for losing the case.
Hamby was among the board members to support the payment and previously supported the segregation of LGBTQ+ children’s books. The county quorum court appointed her to the library board in early 2023, replacing one of three members that resigned en masse after the creation of the “social sections.”
Hamby said April 18 that Grzymala “lied to” her and “caused the lawsuit.” These “defamatory statements… were communicated to thousands of Arkansas citizens” via the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s River Valley bureau, Grzymala’s complaint states.
In addition to Hamby and Crawford County, the lawsuit lists “John Doe 1-5” as defendants. Grzymala’s attorney, Christopher Hooks, signed an affidavit attached to the complaint, stating that all the relevant defendants in the case are as yet unknown and will be named in the case upon Hooks learning their identities.
Hooks previously alleged a violation of Crawford County’s “separation agreement” with Grzymala in an April 23 letter to the county seeking $100,000 in damages over Hamby’s remarks.
Grzymala’s lawsuit seeks punitive damages, alleging she has faced “damage to [her] reputation as a librarian/library director, damages to reputation in the community, loss of wages, loss of earning capacity and business opportunity, incidental expenses, mental anguish, [and] extreme emotional distress.”
The complaint requests a jury trial in the circuit court of Washington County, where Grzymala now lives.
Hamby and her husband, Jeffrey, co-wrote a December 2022 letter to Crawford County pastors, saying LGBTQ+ library books within children’s reach is “grooming a generation of children to feel this is normal and an accepted way of life.”
This was part of a “pressure campaign” to force the library to segregate the books, an action publicly framed as a “compromise,” Grzymala alleges in her complaint.
The county lost a separate lawsuit over Act 372 of 2023, which would have given local elected officials the final say over whether to relocate challenged library materials some consider “obscene.” The 18 plaintiffs who sued the state, including Crawford County Library patrons, cited county officials’ statements that Act 372 was a reason to maintain the “social sections.”
A federal judge blocked the challenged portions of Act 372, citing First Amendment violations, in December. The legal fees facing Crawford County defendants in both lawsuits exceeded $575,000, library board chairman Keith Pigg said in April.
