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Huntington Beach ordered to pay $1 million in lawyer fees in library censorship lawsuit

April 30, 2026

Huntington Beach must foot roughly $1 million in legal bills for restricting minors’ access to certain books at the city’s library, an Orange County judge ordered this week.

In a tentative ruling Monday, April 27, Orange County Judge Lindsey Martinez said the city needs to pay $960,000 to attorneys from four legal organizations, who billed more than 1,300 hours of work on the high-profile lawsuit against the city’s book restriction policy.

Erin Spivey, a former librarian and plaintiff in the case, said she’s gratified by the ruling, but exasperated by what she argues is the city’s continued waste of taxpayer money.

“As a resident of Huntington Beach, it’s incredibly frustrating to know we’re losing another $1 million that could have been solved by just putting 10 books back where they belong,” Spivey said. “It just shows that the City Council is not interested in listening to what residents have to say.”

Martinez had ruled in September that the city’s book restriction policy — which barred children from accessing books with sexual content at the Huntington Beach Central Library without parent consent — violated the state’s Freedom to Read Act and cannot be enforced. The books were moved out of the children’s section to another part of the library.

Spivey and two Huntington Beach teenagers, alongside local nonprofit Alianza Translatinx, filed their lawsuit in February 2024.

In her ruling this week, Martinez said the lawsuit “resulted in the enforcement of an important right affecting the public interest” by seeking to enforce state law, “which promotes freedom of expression and the right to receive information, which in turn are fundamental rights under both the United States and California constitutions.”

The City Council voted unanimously in October to appeal the decision. The case is currently pending in the appeals court.

In October 2023, the conservative majority of the Huntington Beach City Council directed librarians to relocate from the children’s section books containing sexually explicit material. The restricted titles, which included “It’s Perfectly Normal” and “Sex is a Funny Word,” were placed on a shelf on the fourth floor of the Central Library and could not be checked out without parental consent.

The council also arranged to establish a community library board, made up of 21 members appointed by the councilmembers, that would be tasked with reviewing and blocking the purchase of books with content it deemed inappropriate. In a June 2024 special election, Huntington Beach voters overwhelmingly approved measures to eliminate the community review board and bar the privatization of libraries.

After losing in court in September, the city was ordered to dismantle the restricted section and restore the teen section at the library, as well as establish legal protections for librarians against pushback from the city.

The city did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Orange County Register

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Huntington Beach ordered to pay $1 million in lawyer fees in library censorship lawsuit

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