Will Huntington Beach voters get their say on a library review board?

A measure to repeal a controversial rule allowing a committee of residents to approve or deny children’s books for Huntington Beach’s public libraries has gathered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

But will it?

The Orange County Registrar of Voters informed the city earlier this month that they had finished counting and verifying signatures.

Now the city has a decision to make, likely at their next City Council meeting on Jan. 21. They can outright repeal the committee, called a “community parent-guardian review board,” or put it to voters, which could happen this coming spring. A public vote could also get pushed to the 2026 general election.

What is the review board?

The Huntington Beach City Council voted in late 2023 to establish a parent-guardian review board to review children’s books for the city’s public libraries and weed out ones they determine to have sexual content or references. The examples of sexual content and references given in the ordinance are “textual or graphic content including sex, sexual organs, sex acts, relationships of sexual nature, or sexual relations in any form.”

Under the ordinance, each City Council member can appoint three people to the board.

Supporters, led by Councilmember Gracey Van Der Mark, have said the review board will ensure that books chosen for the city’s five public libraries reflect local values and protect children from age-inappropriate content.

Critics of the review board have said it will allow a small group of hand-picked residents to ban public library books based on vague criteria. The ordinance establishing the board says members are to review books based on their determination of whether they meet “community standards,” defined as “whether books are acceptable for children’s access, including books that may contain sexual content or sexual references,” including depictions of or references to sexual organs.

Based on this definition, librarians earlier this year identified books about puberty and the menstrual cycle that are intended for teens and moved the titles to an upper shelf in the library’s adult section.

What critics say

Opponents of the review board said the job of curating books for the library should be left to professional librarians — and they mounted a petition drive to get the board repealed.

The state also passed a law, dubbed the “Freedom to Read Act,” which explicitly confronts Huntington Beach’s new library rules. Among other things, the law prohibits cities from banning public library books because they contain sexual content unless that content meets the long-standing definition of obscene set by the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, more than a year after the City Council voted to establish the review board, it’s still not up and running.

Jennifer Carey, a spokesperson for Huntington Beach, told LAist city officials were still determining how to work the parent-guardian review board into the existing process for procuring library books.

The children's section of the Huntington Beach Central Library: A review board could soon decide what titles get included here.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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Will residents get to vote?

The Orange County Registrar of Voters informed the city in a letter dated Dec. 10 that opponents had gathered enough signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot — a minimum of 13,247 (signature gatherers collected a total of 17,034). The registrar said an invoice to the city for nearly $50,000, the cost to verify the signatures, would follow.

Under state law, the city must now decide whether to repeal the board outright, or put it to voters. It can also order a report on the ordinance before making a decision.

If it gets put on the ballot, that could happen in a special election this coming spring, or it could appear on the November 2026 general election ballot.

The City Council is expected to take up the issue at their first meeting of the new year, scheduled for Jan. 21.

Deciding the ballot measure

State law also requires cities to take up any citizen-led measure that qualifies for the ballot at the first regular city council meeting after signature verification. Huntington Beach had a council meeting on Dec. 17, a week after it got the results from the registrar, but did not discuss or vote on the matter.

Carey, the city spokesperson, told LAist the council would not discuss the measure until its first meeting of the new year in late January. Michael Gates, the city attorney, said that’s because the city clerk, who’s the city’s election official, was still evaluating the results. “The first opportunity for this to be presented to Council is January, if requirements are met,” he wrote in an email.

Why that timing matters

Cathey Ryder, who headed up the signature gathering campaign, told LAist she wasn’t informed the measure had qualified for the ballot until several days after O.C. Registrar Bob Page reported his signature verification results to the city — and after LAist reported that the measure had qualified.

Ryder said she suspected the city’s delay in voting on whether and when to put the repeal measure on the ballot might be purposeful. “We feel like some of this has been strategic on the city’s part,” she said.

For example, she said, the city could decide to hold an expensive, stand-alone special election on the library measure if the statutory window closes for putting the measure on the same ballot as the upcoming election to fill the seat of former state Sen. Janet Nguyen, who is replacing Andrew Do on the O.C. Board of Supervisors. “And of course they would use that against us,” Ryder said of the high cost to hold a stand-alone election.

The primary election to fill Nguyen’s seat is scheduled for Feb. 25 and the general election for April 29.

Ryder is also behind a separate proposed ballot measure that would prohibit the city from outsourcing library services to any private company. That measure is still awaiting signature verification by the O.C. Registrar of Voters.

Fredrich Woocher, an L.A.-based election lawyer, said it's not uncommon for interested parties to try and game the timing of ballot measures and special elections.

“Various games get played with these things all the time,” he said.