Libraries aim to be book sanctuaries and protectors of free speech, but two area institutions’ policies of added security and insurance fees ahead of a controversial documentary on Israel allowed a “heckler’s veto” — when an individual or group is silenced due to the conduct of an audience — to stop the film from being shown, advocates say.
Earlier this month, the ACLU of Illinois sent letters to the boards of Northbrook and Highland Park public libraries, calling their policies that impose additional security and insurance fees on room bookings in anticipation of protests unconstitutional.
“In short, due to the angry reaction to the film’s ideas, the library imposed a fee that ultimately prevented the film from being shown,” wrote Rebecca Glenberg, chief litigation counsel for the First Amendment at the ACLU of Illinois. “The library’s handling of the controversy encourages members of the public who are unhappy about a group’s use of a library to shut down the event by creating a sufficient hue and cry.”
Now the libraries say they will evaluate their room rental policies after a canceled screening of a documentary on Israel earlier this year in Northbrook led to outcry from First Amendment advocates.
The letters were in response to a planned September screening of the documentary “Israelism” at the Northbrook Public Library, which opponents have called antisemitic.
The event was organized by groups including Jewish Voices for Peace and the Chicagoland Jewish Labor Bund. Organizers canceled the event when the library requested $3,000 in security and insurance fees upfront after staff received scores of emails and calls demanding the event be canceled.
The library has said it supports everyone’s constitutional rights, and its policies aim to ensure people can exercise those rights safely. Northbrook police were unable to provide security for the event and had recommended a security firm instead, library officials said.
In November, the Northbrook library board decided to add a discussion on reviewing its room booking policy to their January meeting agenda, Northbrook Library Executive Director Kate Hall said in an email. The board doesn’t meet in December.
“This recent room booking experience has provided an opportunity for reflection on how we can best serve our community, both now and in the future, and the board had already been planning a review prior to the ACLU letter,” Hall wrote.
When free speech is expensive
The opposition to the “Israelism” screening was organized by the Chicago Jewish Alliance.
The documentary “explores how Jewish attitudes towards Israel are changing dramatically, with massive consequences for the region and for Judaism itself,” according to its website. It won several awards at film festivals last year, but sparked renewed controversy in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.
When the screening was initially announced, the Chicago Jewish Alliance asked their followers on social media to “email Northbrook library and let them know this shouldn’t be happening in our own backyard.”
The group decided to show up to the event and participate in the Q&A to provide a different viewpoint, said alliance member Josh Weiner.
“We simply wanted to attend to provide viewpoint diversity on the film in order to facilitate a free and full conversation about the topic. The security requirements are not really because of us, but it’s precisely because anti-Israel groups have a history of disrupting free speech when certain ideas are introduced that conflict with their narrative,” he said.
Weiner said they have been in communication with the production team of “Israelism” to host a debate on the film.
Following the September saga, Highland Park library trustees adopted a room booking policy Oct. 15 that is similar to Northbrook’s and gives the executive director “unbridled discretion” to require proof of insurance or charge additional fees related to security, according to the ACLU.
“In the absence of objective guidelines governing insurance and fees, government officials have the power to make disfavored ideas more expensive to express,” Glenberg wrote. “This power is another reason the new policy is unconstitutional.”
After receiving the letter, the Highland Park library said in a statement it will “carefully evaluate our policy to ensure they align with these values while addressing safety concerns responsibly.”
Genevieve Lakier, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School and First Amendment law expert, said the situation is a straightforward case of a heckler’s veto and called the library’s policies “clearly unconstitutional.
While the library has the right to charge fees for people to use its space, Supreme Court precedent says those fees “cannot be conditioned upon what the person is going to say, what the film that they’re going to show consists of, or, and most importantly, it cannot be in response to groups opposing the showing of that film because if the library does that, the long-term effect is just to give in to the censors,” Lakier said.
“It means if you want to have this film not shown in the local public library, all you have to do is write a lot of nasty emails and make a big fuss and make a library worried about security for justifiable reasons and then require the film producers or the group to pay a lot of money,” Lakier said. If they don’t have the money, “you can just shut down speech you don’t like.”
Annie Kaufman, education committee member of Jewish Voices for Peace, said she appreciated the ACLU’s letters and hoped they can help the libraries, particularly Northbrook, uphold their mission.
“The Northbrook library, it’s very interesting; they are proud to be a book sanctuary because they are opposed to book banning, and they host programming on how to resist cyberbullying,” Kaufman said. “This was really a very clear example of capitulating to cyberbullying and really changing the content of what’s at the library.”
Weiner said he thinks the ACLU is missing some key details in the situation. He said his organization has also had to pay for security at its events because of disruptions caused by other groups, and they are only interested in providing different perspectives, not disruptions.
“There was no security issue because we were going to be there,” he said. “There was a security issue because they couldn’t handle us being there with an alternative view.”
Lakier said ensuring First Amendment rights and public safety can be tricky, but it’s the responsibility of institutions who claim to uphold free speech ideals to protect everyone’s voices, including that of protesters. Lakier said the Northbrook library could have helped the situation by offering to pay the fees.
“I tell my students all the time, free speech, turns out not to be free, it’s quite expensive,” Lakier said. “Sometimes, if you’re going to have controversial speakers, you will have to in some cases pay the security costs associated with protecting them because you do have this obligation to protect them.”