Surf City Censorship
Catching up with the MAGA book banners of Huntington Beach
This year, for Banned Books Week, I followed up on the book banning story I wrote in April 2025. Here’s where things stood in Huntington Beach at that time:
“In Huntington Beach, where the City Council recently voted unanimously to install a commemorative MAGA plaque in front of the central library, there is also a push to censor library collections. The Council has called for a parent guardian review board to screen books in the library’s children and teen collections, and for any title found to contain vaguely defined “sexual content” to be placed in a restricted area. Currently the subject of a lawsuit as well as a special election, the policy is doggedly supported by Council members, who repeatedly deny that moving books to a restricted area constitutes a ban.”
The aforementioned special election, proposed by the City Council at a projected cost of one million dollars (Library Journal reports that the election ended up costing 1.5 million), consisted of two measures that library activists had gathered signatures to support: repealing the library review board (measure A) as well as preventing the city from privatizing the library (measure B).
Library advocates believed the last minute special election was a strategic choice by the City Council: “Special elections usually have low turnout, and they thought they could win that way.” Despite the whirlwind timeframe, however, supporters of the library, including the Friends of the Huntington Beach Public Library, joined forces to campaign for the ballot measures. Their efforts were successful: both A and B won with about 60 percent of the vote.
September of 2025 brought a legal win as well: Judge Lindsey Martinez ruled that the move of selected children’s books into a restricted section of the library violated the California Freedom to Read Act (AB 1825). The Huntington Beach City Council subsequently voted (unanimously) to appeal this decision. The appeal remains pending. Library advocates report that the youth restricted shelf, too, remained in place.
These legal proceedings come at great cost. In April of 2026, the Orange County Superior Court ordered Huntington Beach to pay nearly 1 million dollars in attorney fees, for over 1,300 hours of work.
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The Huntington Beach City Council’s interference in library operations didn’t stop with book bans and review boards, either. Over the last year, the Council has undermined the freedom to read in several additional ways.
In June of 2026, the City Council refused to accept a $825,000 donation from the Friends of the Huntington Beach Public Library for library books and materials. “Many residents now believe Friends is being punished for opposing the city council’s library policies,” Carol Daus, a former board member of the Friends of the Huntington Beach Public Library, wrote in an opinion piece for the Voice of OC.
The City Council also reallocated existing library resources. In March of 2026, the councilors unanimously approved a plan to move the local surf museum into the Main Street Branch Library. The plan allocated 1,200 square feet of the library to the museum, with 3,600 feet shared between the library and museum. The library would retain only 4,000 dedicated square feet. The surf museum opened inside the library in July.
“The city has installed a surf museum that is not a city entity and now occupies roughly 60% of the library’s space, displacing readers and adding noise to what was once a place for quiet study and reading,” wrote Daus. In a letter to the LA Times, Huntington Beach resident Buzz McCord noted, “The truth is that the museum, contrary to promises and plans, now occupies a significant portion of the main reading room.”
That the MAGA City Council continues to undercut libraries and the freedom to read is not surprising. As Doris Lessing observed, “A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants.”
“I’ve always been of the belief that the library is the most democratic institution in the country,” Erin Spivey a former librarian and plaintiff in the legal case said. “Whoever walks in the door is equal to every other person who walks in the door. They are all welcome, and they should all be represented in our collection.” Spivey is currently one of four Democrats running for the Huntington Beach City Council, hoping to disrupt the MAGA majority.
Gracey Van Der Mark, Huntington Beach City Council member and architect of the book banning initiatives, is now running for the California State Assembly, where she could bring her politics to a larger stage. Her opponent, former football star Chris Kluwe, was involved in the Huntington Beach library conflict as well. In February of 2025, he was arrested for disturbing an assembly of the City Council, where he’d gone to object to the MAGA library plaque. “MAGA stands for trying to erase trans people from existence. MAGA stands for re-segregation and racism. MAGA stands for censorship and book bans,” he said, calling MAGA “explicitly a Nazi movement.”
A recent PEN report found that “public libraries are increasingly censorship battlegrounds, leading to interference with book displays, improper reshelving mandates, and disruptions of events.” What is happening in Huntington Beach is not an isolated incident. However, the last year has shown that the community can successfully organize to resist book bans, and that MAGA politicians will continue to undermine libraries in multiple ways.
Banned Books Week runs from October 4–10 this year. Find out more about what you can do to fight book bans this week and every week on the Banned Books Week website.
