Our city has been through the wringer with room rentals, specifically whether to allow "political" activities to take place during a room rental.  According to our city's lawyers, it is unconstitutional for us to deny a rental because of the content of their activity.  Obv if they are literally building bombs or doing something else illegal, that's in a different, criminal category.  In our case, I wasn't the one who disagreed with what was being presented, it was other residents of our city who vehemently disagreed with the presentations of other room renters.  

Having had more than a year and a half to mull this over, and having been asked what felt like hundreds of times "Well, would you allow Nazis to hold a meeting in our rooms?"  And the frustrating, but solid, answer I would give is "yes, I would."  Besides the Free Speech constitutional issues, think about what it would truly mean for me to not allow Nazis to rent our rooms.  First, I would have to know they are Nazis and, as you mentioned, they are not likely to honestly identify themselves if they think they might be denied the rental.  Second, is it on me to attend every room rental to be sure the group isn't actually a Nazi organization or that their presentations/conversations/activities don't veer into "political" territory?  Or, what if it is truly a "regular" group but one of the attendees turns out to be a Nazi and takes the otherwise perfectly okay conversation into a pro-Nazi direction?  Even if I did attend all room rentals, what am I going to do?  Stand up and order them out of the room?  Call the police because they're saying something I find offensive?  Who defines what is "political?"  These days there is almost nothing that isn't political.  For me, I don't want any of that on my shoulders.

What you can do is monitor your fire code capacities closely and turn people away when the room is full - an overcrowded room is more likely to stoke anger among its attendees.  Listen closely to the noise level - not only is a loud room more likely to get out of control, but excessive noise is a violation of our library behavior policy and rentals can be denied to people who violate those policies.  Take careful note of the condition of the room after groups leave because rentals can be denied to people who have damaged library property.  Do you allow alcohol?  If not, take a quick peek and see if anyone is drinking or serving alcohol - another valid reason to ask them to leave immediately and also to deny a future rental.  Last, our previous policy required anyone who was marketing their event to make it clear that this was not a library event even though it was being held at the library.  We had verbiage for them to use on flyer - and they did and it helped - but this was all taken out of the final lawyer-created policy.  

As far as having a rule saying you don't allow private parties, maybe that falls into a different category?  We allowed them before all of this so it wasn't an issue for us.   I've attached both our previous (perfectly good, IMHO) rental policy and the new one our legal counsel wrote (and the one we now use).

This is a difficult area and at the very least, I would suggest you consult your lawyer before denying any rentals or you could find yourself with an even more costly lawsuit.  Good luck and don't hesitate to reach out if you want more info about our policy or what led to it or anything else.  :) 

From: "Michlib" <michlib-l@liblists.org>
To: "Michlib" <michlib-l@liblists.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2026 8:58:39 AM
Subject: [Michlib-l] Meeting Room Policies

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