A Georgia bill that would open librarians up to criminal charges for allowing minors to access “explicit” content remains the subject of intense debate at the State Capitol with just two weeks left in this year’s legislative session.
A dozen parents, media specialists and advocates spoke before state lawmakers of the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee Wednesday to both praise and criticize Senate Bill 74.
Under Georgia law, it is a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature to allow minors to access explicit or harmful content. The law defines explicit or harmful content using the Miller Test, the U.S. Supreme Court’s guidelines for determining what content is obscene and therefore not protected by the First Amendment. SB 74 would eliminate an exemption in that law for public and school libraries.
Lead sponsor Republican State Sen. Max Burns said a librarian need only make a “good faith” attempt to abide by the law by identifying explicit material and shelving it in an adult section.
Several citizens who testified Wednesday came from Columbia County, where the library system leaders decided to move several books with LGBTQ subjects into the adult section after county commissioners passed updated guidelines on age ratings for books.
Among the parents and residents who testified in support of SB 74 was Priscilla Bence, a Columbia County resident who has challenged books with LGBTQ subjects within the local library system.
“The problem is the books on the shelves that are readily available, and it’s a pervasive problem,” she said. “It’s not most librarians, but there’s enough in there to be of great concern to parents.”
Bence and several others like Rhonda Thomas, the founder and president of Christian education advocacy organization Truth in Education, talked about the negative effects of early exposure to sexual content. “I want to thank Senator Burns for putting children above adults, and I know this law will protect the librarians as much as it will the children,” Thomas said.
Jill McCoy, another Columbia County resident, said SB 74 was “common-sense decency.”
“Parents need to know that their children’s libraries are safe and that when they come into the library, and they go to their section, and they sit on the floor, and they start pulling books out to see which ones they want to take home, that they’re not seeing stuff that’s going to give them nightmares,” McCoy said. “And once they see it, they can’t un-see it.”
On the other hand, Columbia County resident Karin Parham has threatened to sue the leaders of the local library system, arguing that the reclassification of books violates the First Amendment.
Parham told the committee that people are misapplying the definition of material that is “harmful to minors.”
“What we’re seeing in our local community is some people have a certain definition of obscenity, and they want to apply that more broadly, and it doesn’t necessarily meet the legal definition of obscenity,” she said.
“The thing is many of these individuals in our community have been challenging these books and they’re just not getting the result that they want,” she added. “So they’re hoping to pass this legislation so they can use [the] power of law enforcement to censor the materials at the library and make it how they want it.”
The Columbia County Board of Commissioners and the Columbia County Library Advisory Board did not respond to requests for comment.
Kimberly Thames, a retired school library media specialist in Gwinnett County, said the Georgia Department of Education already requires the implementation of “robust and effective criteria” for screening books at school libraries.
Moreover, Thames said, school districts have already tried to target books about the history of the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement. “These books have been listed and banned from schools when they’re just history and they are not the pretty white American history that we all want to hear,” she said.
Jennifer Saunders, the library media services director for Atlanta Public Schools, said a lot of “unanswered questions” surround the bill and that it creates “unnecessary fear” in media specialists, urging lawmakers to solicit input from more librarians.
The ACLU of Georgia’s First Amendment policy advocate Sarah Hunt-Blackwell similarly said the bill creates a “chilling effect” on libraries that may limit the availability of books, citing similar Arkansas legislation that a federal district court struck down in December on grounds that it violated the First Amendment.
Hunt-Blackwell also took issue with SB 74’s inclusion of the word “knowingly,” in that librarians must have “knowingly” provided minors access to harmful materials to be charged under the bill.
“The mental state of knowing that is included in this bill is a lower threshold to meet than intentional, meaning that knowing and intentional are not interchangeable, and that SB 74 makes potential criminal charges against librarians easier,” she said. “SB 74 not only threatens the constitutional right of free speech, but also imposes undue criminal liability on librarians, creating a chilling effect that undermines the very purpose of libraries as centers of learning and exploration.”
Prior to the testimonies, the committee also discussed other legal aspects of the bill. Democratic State Rep. El-Mahdi Holly questioned the criminal penalty of a misdemeanor specifically of a high and aggravated nature, saying that librarians in violation of SB 74 would receive the same penalty as someone who commits battery against a pregnant woman.
Burns said the committee could change the charge to a misdemeanor instead of a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature if they chose, but questioned why a librarian should have a lesser criminal charge than all other Georgians subject to the state’s obscenity law.
Republican State Rep. Rob Leverett said that a reason for charging a librarian with only a misdemeanor is because librarians would have to sift through a large volume of books, whereas a store clerk would have a limited number of materials to monitor.
Leverett added that some of his constituents have expressed concerns with the bill, suggesting that a concession may be warranted. “I do think in the areas where there has been some resistance to trying to address what I would view as reasonable concerns, we sometimes have to take these measures,” he said.
The committee ran out of time to hear all testimonies and will reconvene later this week or early next week. SB 74 already passed in the Senate, so if the House committee votes to pass SB 74, it will then go to a full House vote.
