This story was updated on Tuesday, March 4, 2025, at 4:28 p.m.
Georgia state senators passed a Republican-backed bill that could open up librarians to misdemeanor charges for allowing minors to access explicit or “harmful” materials.
The Georgia State Senate voted 32-23 to pass Senate Bill 74 on Monday.
Current state law prohibits the distribution of materials that are sexually explicit or otherwise harmful to minors, which the law defines as the representation or description of “nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse” when it is “lacking in serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors,” “predominantly appeals to the prurient, shameful, or morbid interest of minors,” and is deemed “patently offensive” by adult standards of what is appropriate for minors. Public libraries and libraries operated at a school or university, however, are exempt from this law.
SB 74 would remove that exemption, meaning librarians could be found guilty of a misdemeanor offense unless they can demonstrate they made a good faith attempt to identify and remove minors’ access to inappropriate materials.
Republican State Sen. Max Burns, the lead sponsor of the bill, stressed his affinities for libraries and said the legislation would only seek to make librarians equal to other Georgians under the law.
“This is not a bill to penalize libraries or librarians. It’s a bill designed to protect children,” he said.
“It does not ban any book or any material from the library. It does not ban anything,” he added. “It does not limit access to material for adults, and its intent is not to put anyone in jail.”
He also emphasized a line in the bill that would find librarians guilty of breaking the law only if they “knowingly” provided minors access to explicit materials.
“You place children’s materials in children’s sections. You place youth materials in youth sections. You place any questionable material in adult sections,” he said, adding that store clerks already need to comply with this law.
He added that a “good faith attempt” to abide by the law could be putting a book in an adult section after someone has flagged a book in the children’s section as inappropriate.
Democratic State Sen. Emanuel Jones expressed concern that this law also extends to electronic material.
“My problem is you’re holding a librarian responsible for material that she or he may not even program, even know how to program the system. In the event someone else makes a mistake, they will be held liable for it,” he said.
Burns responded that libraries already have restrictions on accessing explicit content online.
Democratic State Sen. Elena Parent, who serves on the Senate Committee on Education and Youth, called the bill “misguided.”
“This legislation is not about protecting children. It’s much more about censorship, fear and government overreach into our institutions,” she said.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia has opposed the bill on similar grounds.
“Libraries are places of learning and discovery, not battlegrounds for political agendas. This bill forces librarians to act as agents of censorship under threat of prosecution. This is a dangerous precedent that punishes those who work tirelessly to serve our communities,” said Christopher Bruce, ACLU of Georgia policy and advocacy director, in a statement to WABE.
Parent added that the definition of “harmful to minors” is “vaguely defined” and could be used to restrict access to works that delve into challenging and socially relevant topics.
“The issue is, who decides what is harmful? Literature, history, health, education and even classic works of fiction often contain discussions of sexuality and relationships,” she said. “Are we really wanting to turn our librarians into criminals for providing access to books that discuss topics like puberty, LGBTQ+ rights or the realities of sexual violence?”
She added that schools and school districts have removed from their shelves works like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Beloved” and “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank because parents or administrators deemed them inappropriate for students.
Burns responded that the bill would not ban books but ensure that books are categorized in adult or children’s sections.
State Sen. Josh McLaurin, also a Democrat, said this is a fearmongering effort started by a fringe group of parents “who don’t want to see ordinary depictions of LGBTQ” or any topic related to sexuality depicted in materials accessed by their children, equating the push for this bill to the “fear toxin” in Christopher Nolan’s “Batman Begins.”
McLaurin added that actually putting a librarian in jail would be a “political nuclear bomb,” saying that the real purpose of the bill is to give parents and prosecutors undue control over materials in libraries and where they’re placed instead of allowing libraries and technicians to “exercise independent judgment” under current State Board of Education regulations.
“So now it’s not up to the media techs and librarians whether a material is appropriate for children. It’s up to an elected solicitor,” he said.
In addition, McLaurin said the “affirmative defense” clause of the bill does not provide much comfort for librarians since they would need to go through a lengthy legal process anyway. “That’s something you have to prove by a preponderance of the evidence, once you’ve already been charged, once you’ve already retained a counsel, once you’ve already gone to court, and your trial, you get to tell a jury, ‘I was doing everything in my power to scrub the entire internet on EBSCOhost, by the way, and every printed material in a library with tens of thousands of volumes for anything that could possibly offend a single parent.'”
In response, Burns said this bill does not represent a “fringe idea,” adding that other states have made similar moves.
