In what might be a case of good intentions gone wrong, bills fighting against book bans might come with a potential unintended consequence: library penalties.
The American Library Association (ALA) released a new report last week revealing that “[t]he number of titles targeted for censorship surged 65 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, reaching the highest levels ever documented by the American Library Association (ALA). The new numbers show efforts to censor 4,240 unique book titles in schools and libraries.” For added perspective, this almost doubles the 2022’s number of 2,571.
About 30% of the book titles challenged in schools last year included characters of color or discussed racism or race, while another 30% featured LGBTQ characters or themes, according to the free speech advocacy group PEN America. Additionally, nearly half of those books contained violent or abusive themes, and a third contained writing about sexual experiences between characters.
As the GOP’s censorship efforts have swept across the country, Democratic lawmakers have attempted to fight back with anti-book ban bills. California and Illinois have already enacted laws against book bans, and Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Washington have introduced bills at the state level.
However, now experts are becoming worried because “some of the legislation would fine school districts or withhold library funding if their provisions are not followed, such as in Illinois and California. The enforcement measures could especially be a threat to public schools and libraries that are underfunded and understaffed, they say,” NBC News reports.
Director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom Deborah Caldwell-Stone says, “It always is a concern when you put funding on the line for any reason.”
“We would not want to see bills that are overly prescriptive that make it difficult for smaller communities or rural communities to receive their funding,” Caldwell-Stone continued. “Our big concern is not creating a system that would make it so onerous to comply with the bill that it makes it difficult for libraries with fewer resources.”
Not everyone is as concerned about the possibility of impending adverse effects. Emily Knox, an associate professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s School of Information Sciences, thinks that the funding connection is a crucial component of the Illinois bill.
“That’s what gives the bill any teeth at all,” said Knox. “Libraries and schools need more money, but because funding is so precious to public institutions, you don’t want to do things that jeopardize the possibility of getting funding from a source like the state. So it does make a big difference.”
Presently, targeted bills in California and Illinois still involve a withholding of funds to libraries if they do not have certain policies in place and materials on shelves. But, in the wake of these growing concerns, some states have already reconsidered the library penalties. For instance, New Jersey legislators have already removed the financial penalty language from their proposed bill, and bills are moving forward in Oregon and Washington that do not include fines.
Either way, libraries and librarians are on the front lines of the book banning war. On the other side of the aisle, Republican Governor of Arkansas Sarah Huckabee Sanders “signed a bill into law that would have done a number of things, including creating the potential of criminal liability for librarians.”
