Wyoming Library Director, fired over LGBT books, sues county. County’s pro-LGBT insurance company pays $700K rather than fight lawsuit.

MassResistance named in lawsuit – because we helped parents fight back.

It was an easily winnable case. But the insurance company would not contest it.

February 11, 2026

The radical LGBT movement - and their allies - will go to extraordinary lengths to keep books like this available to everyone's children.

Gillette, Wyoming was the scene of a big MassResistance victory in the battle to rid public libraries of obscene children’s books.

But the county’s pro-LGBT insurance company caved in and agreed to settle when the leftist ex-librarian sued. But the victory – and the county’s strong new library policy – still stands.

Public Library horror show

Gillette, located in Campbell County, is one of the most conservative areas in Wyoming. But in 2021, local parents reached out to MassResistance because the county public library was bringing in explicit sexual, homosexual, and transgender books for children and teenagers. The lurid topics included masturbation, anal sex, BDSM, “kink”, sex toys, breast removal, and prostitution. One children’s book included depictions of a 14-year-old boy having a sexual experience with a 47-year-old man.

The Library Director, Terri Lesley, aggressively defended those books. When parents complained to the Library Board about all this, they were treated disrespectfully and ignored. When the parents appealed to the Campbell County Commission (which appoints the Library Board), the Commission was hostile to them.

Library Director Terri Lesley poses for a local reporter. (Photo by Nick Reynolds/WyoFile)

MassResistance chapter turns things around!

So the Gillette parents organized a Wyoming MassResistance chapter and fought back. For months, they ran an unrelenting “full-court press” on their local officials over this sickening situation.

Parents and local citizens were relentless demanding that their County Commission needed to fix the situation. At one point the Commission called a special meeting (above) to discuss it.

Outside the library the message to the community was very direct.

It worked. The following year, 2022, the County Commission relented and appointed a conservative-majority Library Board. The new Board was determined to turn things around.

MassResistance worked with the Library Board to create a bulletproof “library collections policy” to remove and keep out the pornography targeting children. We connected the Board with Liberty Counsel, a premier national pro-family legal group that has won numerous cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Over several months, Liberty Counsel helped the Board craft a strong policy that would pass all legal and constitutional challenges. In July 2023, the Library Board formally passed the new policy.

But the Library Director, Terri Lesley, immediately announced that she would not follow the policy and that she would refuse to remove any books.

The Library Board tried to persuade Lesley to do her job, but she continued to refuse. So the Library Board called a special meeting and fired Lesley. At that meeting, Lesley read a statement ranting about MassResistance causing this trouble, and stating that she had a First Amendment right to decide what books are in the County Library. But the firing was completely legal. (Wyoming is an “at will” employment state.)

Terri Lesley (far left) looks on while the Library Board members vote 4-1 to fire her.

At the Library Board meeting after being fired, Terri Lesley reads her statement ranting about MassResistance and her "First Amendment rights." Note that she's facing the audience, not the Board members. [Photo: County 17]

(See all the MassResistance posts on the library battle in Campbell County.)

The Library Board then hired a new Library Director who agreed to follow the new book collection policy. Soon after, most of the remaining leftist library staffers quit! And the library began to get cleaned up.

Fired Library Director begins filing baseless lawsuits

Lesley would not leave quietly. She retained a far-left Colorado-based law firm that had worked with the radical LGBT group Wyoming Equality to get a federal judge to strike down Wyoming’s gay marriage ban. The head lawyer says on his website, “I like to go back there [to Wyoming] and just mess with the state as much as I can.”

Within weeks, Lesley and her lawyers filed an outrageous 44-page lawsuit against a local Gillette family (father, mother, and son) who had been active in testifying at meetings and alerting the public about the library books. The filing also includes lies and exaggerations about MassResistance.

Nothing that the family did is criminal or in any way actionable. They simply did what people across the political spectrum do every day in America: They complained about their government. They’ve been targeted with a classic SLAPP lawsuit. Its goal is to silence conservatives and instill fear. The lawsuit is still working its way in the courts.

But that lawsuit was just the prelude to the big lawsuit against the county officials.

Huge baseless lawsuit against the Campbell County officials

A year and a half later, in April 2025, Lesley filed an 89-page lawsuit against the individual members of the Library Board and County Commission. The suit was filed in Federal Court rather than a state court because it claims constitutional and federal civil rights law violations.

It begins with over 300 paragraphs of wildly distorted or outright false background information (about the “book banning,” what people testified about, etc.) and the “trauma” Lesley experienced over this. It’s also peppered with more lies and exaggerations about MassResistance, including numerous photos from our website. The suit then presents a list of alleged offenses against her by the county officials and seeks extensive damages and back pay.

Terri Lesley’s charges against the Campbell County officials fall into these categories – all of which are absurd on their face and would be easily disprovable:

• Violation of Freedom of Association – Discrimination and Retaliation (First Amendment and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act). She alleged she was punished for associating with LGBTQ individuals or organizations.
  In fact: Completely absurd. Nobody cared who she associated with. That had nothing to do with her doing her job properly.
• Hostile Work Environment (Title VII, Federal Law).  She cited public criticism, tense meetings, hostile rhetoric by third parties, and pressure from officials.
  In fact: Third-party speech (i.e., public testimony, public outrage) is not employer harassment. Plus, policy disputes and criticism usually don’t qualify as workplace harassment.
• Discrimination and Retaliation against Protected Speech (First Amendment, 42 U.S. Code § 1983). She alleged that she was fired because of her views and advocacy regarding intellectual freedom and LGBTQ-related materials. She framed her refusal to implement the policy as protected speech on matters of public concern, not mere job performance.
  In fact: Nobody on any board cared about her views. And refusal to follow policy is conduct, not expression.
• Equal Protection (Fourteenth Amendment). She alleged discriminatory treatment based on viewpoint or association.
  In fact: Same reasons as above for First Amendment claims. She was fired because she refused to do her job. This is a very weak claim.
• Viewpoint Discrimination (First Amendment). She claimed the policy was a pretext to suppress LGBTQ viewpoints and that enforcing it amounted to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
  In fact: The government is allowed to control its own speech. It has no obligation to include all viewpoints, especially destructive ones. Library boards, not librarians, decide collections.
• Civil Conspiracy – Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. She used this Reconstruction-era law to allege a conspiracy among officials and others to deprive her of civil rights based on class-based animus.
  In fact:  Lesley’s claim has nothing to do with the reason or intent of that law. It’s offensive that she would attempt to use it.
• Religion Establishment Clause (First Amendment). Lesley is claiming that the county’s new library collection policy illegally favors Christianity over other religions or non-religious beliefs because it rejects children’s books featuring obscenity and sexual perversions.
  In fact: That is nonsense. Obscenity and sexual perversion are very destructive for children irrespective of religion.

Although this lawsuit makes many emotional, chilling, and inflammatory claims, any objective reading would conclude that the case had no actual merit. There was no wrongdoing in her firing. A reasonably intelligent, aggressive lawyer could plow this entire lawsuit into the ground.

So why did Lesley’s lawyers go to the trouble to write and file this ludicrous lawsuit? The obvious answer is that when they sued the county officials, they knew who they were really dealing with. The county’s insurance company, Travelers Insurance, is woke and immensely pro-LGBT. It’s also well known that it’s the insurance company, not the county, who decides the direction of lawsuits such as this.

Travelers Insurance has long bragged that it scores a perfect 100% on the LGBT Human Rights Campaign’s “Corporate Equality Index.” (It has scored 100% for at least the last 10 years in a row.)

To get to 100%, a company needs to be very extreme: Among other things, Travelers Insurance must:

• Actively support LGBTQ+ causes
• Engage in public activities to support the LGBTQ+ community (e.g., marketing, philanthropy, or policy engagement)
• Have mandatory diversity training that includes LGBTQ+ topics
• Have extensive LGBTQ+ “inclusion” policies
• Pay for employees’ “sex-change” operations
• Have equitable benefits for LGBTQ+ workers/families
• Maintain clear, documented gender transition guidelines
• Establish an LGBTQ+ employee resource group
• Demonstrate supplier diversity that includes certified LGBTQ+ business enterprises
• Avoid all anti-LGBTQ+ activity and contributions to anti-LGBTQ+ causes

An example of what Travelers Insurance posts on their social media, etc.

Travelers Insurance put out a press release bragging about scoring 100% on "Corporate Equality Index" for seven years in a row. And they're still at that level.

It was pretty clear that Travelers Insurance’s worst nightmare would be to have to fight in a well-publicized lawsuit opposing one of the national LGBT movement’s biggest obsessions – homosexual and transgender books in a public library.

The defendants respond

In July 2025, Travelers Insurance’s lawyers filed a 10-page response to Lesley’s lawsuit. It was well-written and succinct. “The plaintiff’s complaint is an improper run-on narrative combining fact, fable, self-praise, and a self-heroic tale which is not suitable for a complaint,” the response said. It also corrected several of the glaring factual errors. It correctly brushed aside all of Lesley’s criminal allegations as completely frivolous: “The Plaintiff’s claims fail to state a claim for which relief can be granted as under the current state of the law.”

Unfortunately, this was just puffery to make it appear that they were serious, not an intent to actually carry out those aggressive-sounding statements. And interestingly, there was no Motion to Dismiss filed by the defendants.

Caving in – and dishonestly helping the national LGBT movement

Over the next few months there were several minor standard filings back and forth. There was no activity of any substance.

Then on October 8, 2025, Travelers Insurance Company entered into a “Settlement Agreement” with Terri Lesley and her lawyers. Travelers agreed to pay her $700,000 and she agreed to drop all charges, claims, and causes of action, against the defendants.

County officials told the local press that Travelers Insurance made the decision to settle the case. The County would have to pay $25,000 as a deductible.

The agreement carried no admission of guilt. But immediately, LGBT activists pounced on it. One prominent activist told county officials: “You acted irresponsibly, even though you were told what you were doing was going to end up in court. You do not have the right to censor books.”

This is also dishonestly being bandied about by the LGBT movement as a “warning” to conservative library boards across the country that they will be liable for huge payouts.

Final thoughts

The truth remains that a reasonably intelligent, hard-working attorney could have easily beaten this – especially before a jury in Wyoming. In allowing this appalling library director to walk away with a huge payout, Travelers Insurance Company has disgracefully put its left-wing politics ahead of its shareholders and the good of America.

Sadly, another very troubling thing has followed this. Lesley’s lawsuit aggressively pushed the preposterous idea that the U.S. Constitution and federal law prohibit any public official or library employee from removing obscene children’s books with sexual, homosexual, transgender, or similar themes. Thus, we’ve been told that the new Campbell County library director is afraid to follow the policy – and the Library Board members share his cowardliness. They’re scared of some kind of “First Amendment” lawsuit if they remove the explicit books. So instead they moved them to somewhere in the adult section.

But the truth is that Lesley and her LGBT law firm were not able to actually win in court. The people’s representatives – i.e., the Library Board, not the employees – always have the power to decide what books the taxpayers’ money buys and displays. That was reinforced by this case!