Washington Post: “Red States Threaten Librarians With Prison — as Blue States Work to Protect Them”

From The Washington Post:

The bill in Connecticut, pending before an education committee, is one of a raft of measures advancing nationwide that seek to do things like prohibit book bans or forbid the harassment of school and public librarians — the first such wave in the country, said John Chrastka, director of library advocacy group EveryLibrary. Legislators in 22 mostly blue states have proposed 57 such bills so far this year, and two have become law, according to a Washington Post analysis of state legislative databases and an EveryLibrary legislative tracker.

But the library-friendly measures are being outpaced by bills in mostly red states that aim to restrict which books libraries can offer and threaten librarians with prison or thousands in fines for handing out “obscene” or “harmful” titles. At least 27 states are considering 100 such bills this year, three of which have become law, The Post found. That adds to nearly a dozen similar measures enacted over the last three years across 10 states.

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The protective library laws being pushed around the country run the gamut: From increasing funding to adding school librarians to campuses to forbidding “discrimination” in choosing which books to stock.

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Many bills lay out procedures to guide book challenges. Some measures say objectors must prove they have read the book they are challenging. Others mandate book review committees must include members of minority racial groups.

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Still other measures, focused on public libraries, build on state and federal laws that forbid discrimination in public places due to a person’s race, sex or gender. These bills assert that removing titles about, say, LGBTQ people, would violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

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