Calling out bad legislation is part of a long game

At LJ, we watch the places where the law touches libraries. In recent years those areas of overlap have become unmistakable, as elected officials across the country propose—and pass—bills that would cut funding, prosecute staff, and remove collection oversight by libraries. We’re also looking for good news, though, and some emerging safeguards are promising.

At the federal level, the Right to Read Act, authorizing funding for school libraries, was introduced in April. And on June 8 the Biden-Harris administration proposed a series of actions to help protect LGBTQIA+ communities that explicitly mention support against book banning.

The big news in mid-June was Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s signing landmark anti-book banning legislation, which notes that it is “the policy of the State to...encourage and protect the freedom of public libraries and library systems to acquire materials without external limitation.” Under Public Act 103-0100, to be eligible for state funding libraries must adopt the American Library Association Library Bill of Rights, or a similar statement of freedom to read; the law goes into effect January 1, 2024. Similar legislation is being discussed in California and New Jersey.

It’s good to see top-down protections in progress—to feel some reassurance that, in certain areas, government is taking seriously the mandate to look out for its voters and their First Amendment rights.

What’s even more encouraging—and what we need more of—is when those voters take it upon themselves to keep an eye on the government. In Arkansas, a group of public libraries, library associations, and advocates have filed a federal lawsuit challenging a state law, Act 372, which was signed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders on March 30 and is slated to go into effect on August 1. The law would make providing access to titles considered “harmful to minors” in libraries and bookstores a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in prison, and would effectively move the authority over material reconsiderations from library boards to elected officials.

This is unconstitutional and violates the First and Fourteenth amendments, says Central Arkansas Library System (CALS) Executive Director Nate Coulter, who initiated the suit (see Central Arkansas Library System Sues State Over Law that Could Jail Librarians). Coulter saw the writing on the wall earlier this year, he says, after Sen. Dan Sullivan—who advocated for cutting the Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library’s millage in half after a 2021 Pride display there drew scrutiny—began talking about a legislative proposal “to address what he considered to be problems in libraries.”

Coulter was a lawyer for 25 years before coming to CALS, and he understood how to assemble a team of allies and pro bono counsel. Equally important, he felt that he and his library were in a position to step out in front. CALS, the state’s largest system, has a broad base of support and could potentially weather fiscal retaliation such as the defunding Missouri libraries were threatened with in March. “With that benefit comes some responsibility to try to take these issues on,” Coulter says. “At the library level, there’s a consensus that this is too important [not to]. It’s essential to our values.”

While it’s tempting to paint the lawsuit as a David and Goliath moment, with libraries, associations, bookstores, and individuals standing up to the state system for what they believe in—one of the plaintiffs is a 17-year-old CALS patron—Coulter emphasizes that this is part of a long game. The suit may not overturn Act 372, but challenging some of its provisions will, ideally, slow its progress. While the wheels of justice are turning, though, libraries need to be doing the work of advocacy, he says, inviting the most vocal critics in to see the difference between the children’s and young adult collections, introducing them to the people who work there, asking them to explain what they don’t like and what they consider a threat to their values.

“It seems to me making that effort is as courageous, perhaps, as filing lawsuits or trying to take on the forces of power,” says Coulter. It also offers a model for how forces that at first might seem too large to move can be approached—and shows that they absolutely should.