The Huntington Beach City Council voted on March 4 to authorize a special election to determine the future of the city’s Community Parent-Guardian Review Board, which reviews and recommends library books before they circulate. The election will be held on June 10 with two ballot initiatives.
The first ballot initiative challenges the council’s proposal to restrict minors’ access to books deemed inappropriate. The second seeks to protect the library from privatization.
On Feb. 18, the council unanimously voted to accept a staff report on the impact of repealing the review board. The report was ordered after the council verified resident signatures to repeal Ordinance 4318, which created the review board in April 2024. The Orange County Registrar of Voters confirmed the signatures Jan. 21.
The issue reached the council amid community discussions about minors’ access to sexual content or references to sexual content in materials at city libraries. The June election will cost between $1.2 million and $1.3 million, according to a staff presentation.
“If the state refuses to protect our children, we will do it ourselves,” Councilmember Gracey Van Der Mark said at a March 4 press conference.
Ordinance 4318, passed in April 2024, established the Community Parent-Guardian Review Board to ensure library materials for children aligned with the “city’s community standards for material acceptable for children’s access,” according to the ordinance.
Textual or graphic content that includes or references sex — including depictions of “sex, sexual organs, sex acts, relationships of sexual nature or sexual relations in any form” — falls under the provision.
The board was granted authority to review items before they were purchased and put into circulation or “made accessible to children without parental consent.” It may also propose existing books in circulation for review.
According to Section 2.66 of the ordinance, the board would consist of up to 21 members appointed to the position by city council members.
As of now, the board has not been formed.
“They have not formed [the council] yet, and I don’t know if it will be formed because citizens collected enough signatures on a ballot initiative petition to put this on the ballots,” Dina Chavez, a representative for the Friends of the Huntington Beach Library, told New University.
Three Huntington Beach residents and Alianza Translatinx, a transgender advocacy group, filed a lawsuit Feb. 26 in Orange County Superior Court. The lawsuit alleges that Huntington Beach’s Resolution 2023-41 and Ordinance 4318 violate the 2024 California Freedom to Read Act, the liberty of speech clause in Article I, Section 2 of the California Constitution and minors’ right to privacy under Article I, Section 1 of the California Constitution.
The Friends of the Huntington Beach Library have protested the board and collected more than 17,000 signatures to object to the policies and potential privatization.
“There were many people who came up to me and came up to the other volunteers and said, ‘I voted for these guys [councilmembers]. I didn’t vote for this stuff,’” Paula Schaefer, a volunteer for the Friends of the Huntington Beach Library, told the LA Times. “A lot of very apolitical people signed these petitions, in my opinion.”
Changes in library policies began when the Huntington Beach City Council approved Resolution 2023-41 in October 2023. The resolution stated the council’s goal was to “protect our community’s children by necessarily involving parental oversight and participation” in minors’ access to materials with sexual content at city libraries.
The resolution required parental or guardian consent before a minor could check out any material with sexual content or references; a provision that the lawsuit claims infringes on privacy rights.
City officials affiliated with the Republican Party have supported the initiative.
Grace Kalmbach is a News Intern for the winter 2025 quarter. She can be reached gkalmbac@uci.edu.
Edited by Jaheem Conley