Small-Town Idaho Library Has Solution To New Dirty-Books Law: Ban Kids
Kids can still go in if accompanied by a parent, preferably an armed one.
Well darn us, while we weren’t looking, Idaho’s Republican-dominated Lege went and passed its stupid “sue the library over icky books” bill that we wrote about back when it was being debated in January. It took Republicans three tries in as many years to draft a version that wouldn’t literally send librarians to prison or get vetoed by Gov. Brad Little because it might encourage “bounty hunter” lawsuits that could bankrupt libraries.
While the version Little signed this year, HB 710, is less draconian than earlier versions, it’s still terrible, giving any would-be censor the power to force libraries to remove materials or face potentially expensive lawsuits.
Here’s how it works: The law prohibits libraries from letting anyone under the age of 18 access books or other material deemed “obscene” or “harmful to minors” as broadly defined by the statute. That includes any depiction of “sexual conduct,” defined as
any act of masturbation, homosexuality, sexual intercourse, or physical contact with a person's clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks or, if such person be a female, the breast.
No bodice-ripping romances for minors (do teen girls read romances anymore? Not in Idaho libraries!), but also, under that definition, presumably no kids’ books showing two fully clothed mommies at a parent-teacher conference.
Once a library gets a written complaint about an item from the parent or guardian of a child in the community (that’s new; previous versions let any idiot challenge books anywhere) who believes the material violates the law, the library must remove it “to a section designated for adults only” within 30 days. If the library doesn’t comply, the parent or guardian can sue, and if they win, the library would have to pay $250 per item to the parent or guardian, plus “actual damages and any other relief available by law,” like judges ordering the library to stop porning.
Want to claim the gay penguin book made your kid gay? Maybe an Idaho judge will buy that and compensate you for the cost of sending the poor kid to conversion therapy, which doesn’t work. We’re just spitballing here.
Notice there’s no option for a library to dispute a complaint, even a ridiculous one. The library can only leave the item on the shelf and wait for the complainant to bring a lawsuit, which the library might well win — but it would still be out the cost of the legal expenses. The cheaper option would be to move more and more books to the adults-only section, which will soon fill with elementary-level books about gay penguins, rainbow unicorns, and princes and knights. Best not to buy those in the first place, huh?
Even though it won’t go into effect until July 1, HB 710 has already taken a toll on one book-loaning temple of sin, the tiny smutmongering library for the central Idaho town of Donnelly (population 249, but the library serves some 2,900 folks in the surrounding area). Because of its tiny building, its equally tiny budget and staff numbers, and its inability to keep a lawyer on retainer, the Donnelly library will become “an adult only library as of July 1st,” as the library announced on Facebook last week.
The library added that
This change is painful and not what we had hoped for at all. We desire to comply with state and federal legislation, but because of size we have to protect our staff, our library, and our taxpayer money.
Way to go, Idaho Republicans!
The library has only 1024 square feet of space — occupancy 16 persons at a time —and while it does have separate areas for children, young adults, and grownups, those are just shelves, so there’s no way to keep a tot from walking a few feet and finding smut like Peyton Place or Slaughterhouse-Five. Or even something really dangerous like Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger, a real book we just found out exists, and is even on the shelf in Donnelly’s children’s section, according to the online catalog.
A quick search of that catalog indicates that, of the American Library Association’s 10 most-challenged books, the only one that Donelly actually has in a print edition is Toni Morrison’s perennial ban-magnet The Bluest Eye, shelved in adult fiction. Seven of the others are only available as ebooks, but the most dangerous book in America, Maia Kobabe’s comic-book memoir Gender Queer, isn’t available at all. Heck, Donnelly doesn’t even have the Infamous Gay Penguins book.
But with a law as vague as HB 710, you never know what will upset someone; even heroic Sir Fartsalot might be in trouble because depictions of “excretory functions” are definitely on the law’s list of content that’s harmful to minors. Same might go for the classic Walter the Farting Dog and two of its sequels, also shelved in Donnelly’s kids’ section to tempt and corrupt the young and giggly. Come July 1, problem solved.
The library will also continue its after-school and summer reading programs, although participating kids will need written permission from a parent or guardian and the programs won’t be held in the library itself. The library uses a couple of tipis to expand its meeting space, and the programs will use reading materials that are carefully “curated” by library staff to remain within the law. (We couldn’t tell whether in the past kids chose their own books, but in any case, they’ll now be carefully shepherded.)
On Facebook, the library notes that the after-school program is
our primary source of funding through both grants as well as tuition monies paid by participants. It is imperative we continue to grow our programming offerings. Over ½ of our payroll is covered through programming and much of our current collection is also covered through programming costs.
Literacy just causes trouble anyway.
In one of several follow-up comments on the Facebook announcement, library director Sherry Scheline explains that kids won’t become persona non lector at the library, but they will have to be accompanied by a parent or guardian to enter. She also noted that the burden of HB 710 will “disproportionately impact small and rural libraries like Donnelly,” which lack the funding base to fight complaints in court, particularly the threat of damages beyond the $250 penalty.
Likely a library could fight each civil penalty and win, but Donnelly cannot afford the legal protections needed to enter into the battle. In addition, McCall and Cascade have attorneys on retainer. Small libraries do not have budgeted legal fees, nor a line item to cover the results of penalties from HB710.
Along those lines, she hoped that one of the state’s large library systems, like Boise’s, will challenge the constitutionality of HB 710: “I am sure their legal team is chomping at the bit to challenge it.”
This Boise resident says hell yes, let’s do exactly that, and soon.
PREVIOUSLY!
[Literary Activism / Donnelly Public Library on Facebook]
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please upgrade to a paid subscription, or if you prefer a one-time donation, we have just the button for that, smooth as Easy Reader on “The Electric Company”
Dare we suggest this might also be an act of "malicious compliance" aimed at stirring resistance to the law? One can hope!
By 5th grade I'd read pretty much all the books in the grade school library that interested me, and the librarian arranged it so I could go to the High School library and check out books.
Thanks Mrs H, it still means the world to me.