On January 19, 2000, the new Loudoun County Library Board of Trustees voted five-to-three to reinstate the American Library Association's Bill of Rights and Freedom to Read statement, five years after the documents had been removed from Loudoun County's library policy.

A former trustee reminded the board that the strong anti-censorship statements had been eliminated from library policy specifically to allow the removal of certain items from library materials. She credited vigilant citizens and some trustees with preventing such censorship from taking place.

One trustee vowed to fight censorship in all forms, and he read the First Amendment of the Constitution in response to an opposing trustee's statement that the United States Constitution did not guarantee the "freedom to read."

A trustee opposed to the restoration of the ALA policies suggested that adopting them could open up Loudoun County Libraries to legal action by groups who would demand specific materials; another pointed out that librarians have always "selected" materials, and that it would be impossible to represent all points of view in a library.

A third offered his opinion that the ALA uses the word "censorship" because it is a "loaded" word that alarms people; he called for the library system to continue to be operated in a "traditional" manner, with librarians selecting materials that meet community standards of decency.

The most telling remark came from the trustee who was concerned because restoring the ALA Bill of Rights would mean assuring residents that both sides of every story would be on display. "That's a tricky one," he said. "There are some people out there who say that Holocaust never happened and that Hitler was a great guy. What do we do when someone wants to check that book out?"

The trustee who introduced the reinstatement of the ALA documents as a policy change called upon the board to put Loudoun County "back in step" with most other library systems in the United States by adopting the strongly anti-censorship professional standard.