A former Texas library director who was fired after she didn’t restrict certain LGBTQ+ books said her county needs to “take the library out of politics” before more titles are removed.
Rhea Young, 56, had served as the Montgomery County library system director since September 2022. Before overseeing the Houston-adjacent area’s eight library branches, she worked in the Splendora Independent School District for decades, first as a teacher, then as a librarian.
“Everything was quiet and running smoothly,” Young said. “At least, I thought so.”
On Jan. 28, she was suddenly fired after the Montgomery County Commissioners Court appointed its leader, County Judge Mark Keough, as acting library director. Young said she was blindsided, but guessed the decision was connected to the community’s ongoing political debate over library policy and materials.
The Montgomery County Commissioners Court did not respond to requests for comment.
Young said the conflict began in March 2023, when a community member started asking her to add books to the library that did not comply with the collection development policy. This included titles from Brave Books, a Conroe-based conservative publishing company that sells “Pro-God, Pro-America” books as an alternative to what it calls “the progressive agenda” in mainstream children’s books.
The community member was homeschool mom Michele Nuckolls, according to Houston Landing and Nuckolls’ own blog. Nuckolls did not respond to requests for comment.
Despite Young’s explanations of library procedures, Nuckolls kept pushing the issue and complained to the Commissioners Court. Young eventually accepted the books as donations, but said she “should have never taken them in the first place.”
In July 2023, Nuckolls was back in commissioners court, objecting to children’s books with LGBTQ+ and anti-racism topics.
“She really is the only one in this whole situation who has an agenda,” Young said. “They kept saying that I had an agenda. I had no agenda unless it’s to make sure that we have a diverse collection. And if that’s what my agenda is, I’ll own that one.”
At the 2023 meeting, the Commissioners Court ordered Young to organize the children’s books into genres. They also directed her to restrict “explicit or questionable” books to patrons 18 and older. Young said she met with multiple commissioners to ask what specifically constituted “explicit or questionable” but received no concrete definition.
“At that point, I was left on my own to decide which books they might think were questionable and explicit because I didn’t think any of them were in the children’s section,” Young said. “So, I moved the ones that I thought they would object to.”
Young was never explicitly told that the Commissioners Court wanted her to restrict books with LGBTQ+ characters and themes, but she said “that is exactly what they want.”
The library created a new section called “parenting,” which included children’s books Young said “dealt with children who were questioning their identities and had questions about transitioning.” She also included titles about other parenting topics.
“I’m not going to have a section of books that is targeting LGBTQ members and children, adults, whoever who are transitioning,” Young said. “We tried to make it a real parenting section.”
But Young didn’t restrict all of the books that Nuckolls objected to. This includes “Answers in the Pages” by David Levithan, a middle grade book ironically about banning books for potential LGBTQ+ content.
“When this group, this lady, found out that I hadn’t moved everything she wanted to move, she kept coming to court and kept complaining and kept bringing people behind her until it culminated into my termination,” Young said.
On Jan. 28, 2025, the Commissioners Court appointed Keough to oversee the library system. Later that day, he fired Young. When she asked why, he would only say that Young knew the reason.
Young said she did not receive a performance review, disciplinary warning or “any redirection” before her termination.
Keough said in a news release that he is now searching for a library director “that shares the values of the community and respects the direction of Commissioners Court.”
“I found that particularly interesting because I grew up in this county, came back and taught in the county for 32 years, raised my kids in the county,” Young said. “I think I probably share some of the values and can represent a diverse group. He’s not talking about the values of the community as a whole. He’s talking about his values.”
Both Nuckolls and certain commissioners complained that there were not enough conservative-leaning books in the library system. However a catalog analysis that Young completed before her termination found there were around 17,000 more conservative titles than LGBTQ+ stories.
Young said there were 10,555 distinct titles for Christian and conservative books in the Montgomery County library system, with a total of 22,000 copies. LGBTQ+ books amounted to 2,007 different titles, with a total of 5,296 copies.
“They need to take the library out of politics and stop letting a handful of community members dictate what the entire 700,000 people in the community read and have access to,” Young said.
She’s received an outpouring of support from the community, some of whom remember her from their time as students. A GoFundMe page has raised over $15,000 for Young as she navigates unemployment.
The Commissioners Court reaffirmed its decision to terminate Young on Feb. 11, after she and a group of residents petitioned for reinstatement.
Young’s removal comes less than a year after the Montgomery County Commissioners Court approved a controversial policy removing librarians from certain book review processes and placing unelected citizens in charge. The newly formed review committee soon made national headlines for reclassifying a nonfiction children’s book about Native American history as fiction.
The title was later moved back and the citizen review committee is currently under review. Young said she doesn’t expect much to change, however.
“I don’t see them taking out that the citizens can remove a book from the (library) system,” Young said. “That’s their ultimate goal.”
