Rosie Stewart: Freedom-to-Read Revelations

Rosie Stewart: Freedom-to-Read Revelations

From First Online With Fran by Frances McGarry

December 12, 2025 · 28 min

About this episode

Rosie Stewart discusses the importance of the freedom to read and the implications of recent court cases on this fundamental right.

Why is freedom to read so important? I think we take for granted the idea that a multiplicity of voices are accessible to us, and our libraries are places that represent the voices of everyone in the community. There's a court case called Little v Llano just came out of the 5th district of the 5th circuit court of appeals, the district covers Texas and Louisiana. This court case is threatening one of the most essential freedoms that we have which is a couple of First Amendment precedents that were established in the 60s-70s that say that very thing -- that books cannot be removed from the shelves based on just disagreeing with the partisan ideas or the ideas wherein...the threats to these freedoms are very real, and what I try to do is get out the urgent message that we could see the Supreme Court weaken the first amendment as it comes to free expression, as it comes to the freedom to read, as it comes to the ability to read what you want, think what you want about it, write what you want, and I don't know what could be more fundamental than that. That's the message I'm really trying to get across. ~ Rosie Stewart Rosalie (Rosie) Stewart is Senior Manager of Public Policy at…

People in this episode

Guest: Rosalie Stewart

Topics covered

  • freedom to read
  • First Amendment
  • intellectual freedom
  • public policy

Keywords

  • libraries
  • community voices
  • court case
  • Little v Llano
  • free expression

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Penguin Random House

Places: Texas, Louisiana

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