Georgia Legislators The Latest To Criminalize Being A Librarian
The hate and stupidity continues. Emboldened by Trump's first presidential term and his subsequent, extremely destructive return to the Oval Office, legislators with an unacknowledged preference for fascism are pushing further and further, comfortable in the uncomfortable fact that the only thing capable of stopping them is their own shame.
And since they don't have any of that, all bets are off. State legislators in Georgia are doing what others have done elsewhere: strip protections from the people staffing public libraries in the apparent hope of jailing or fining a few of them for allowing minors to access content these legislators don't like. Here's Miguel Legoas, reporting for the Savannah Morning News (and reprinted by USA Today):
On Tuesday, the Senate Education and Youth Committee approvedSenate Bill 74and moves on to the Senate Rules Committee, the last step before it can make it to the Senate's vote.
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Georgia Code 16-12-103makes it illegal to sell or distribute harmful materials' to minors. There is an exception for public libraries as well as any library that's part of a school, college, or university. SB 74 removes this exception.
The original law is pretty basic. It makes it illegal for people or businesses to sell or otherwise provide access to sexually explicit content. It's the sort of thing that makes porn publications only accessible to adults and prevents public displays of sexually explicit content anywhere minors might have access to.
What this bill does is strip protections from librarians staffing public libraries, something that clearly has never been a problem before, and clearly isn't even a problem now. It's all very performative and is likely the leading edge of similar bills that will seek to redefine LGBTQ+ content as inherently sexually explicit."
The bill might be performative but the consequences are real. Any violation of this law will be treated as a high and aggravated misdemeanor," which are violations that generate fines of up to $5,000 per violation, as well as the possibility of being sentenced to up to a year in jail. Even if librarians don't end up getting tossed in jail, they're likely to be fined and saddled with a criminal record for simply doing their jobs.
If there's any upside here, it's that the legislation provides an affirmative defense for accused public servants, providing they can demonstrate they made a good faith effort to ensure minors were provided access to sexually explicit materials.
It's a law that does nothing but provide a way for opportunistic prosecutors to punish librarians for being on the clock while allowing minors to check out books to read. Very little of what is carried by most public libraries would fit the description of the content described in the underlying law. But with a little bit of imagination - or an expansion of the definition of explicit" material to cover non-pornography - the state government will have more censorship options, including the chilling effect that might encourage librarians to lock up, remove, etc. content that they think legislators will object to in the future.