By Michael Woyton
Hope everyone had or is having a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and/or Joyous Kwanzaa — if you observe. Now that I’ve said that, isn’t this what “Happy Holidays” is all about?
Anyway, among all the strange whatevers coming out of Mar-a-Lago lately, there was a bit a good news out of Arkansas.
On Monday, a federal judge struck down parts of a law in Arkansas that would have allowed librarians and booksellers to be charged criminally “for providing ‘harmful’ materials to minors,” CBS News reported.
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Under the law, there was a new process created to challenge library materials and relocate them to areas inaccessible to children.
The legislation was signed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, in 2023, but it had been blocked temporarily from going into effect while a court challenge was undertaken.
The United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas declared the law unconstitutional, saying it was overbroad and vague. The court permanently enjoined its enforcement.
According to the American Library Association, the court said, “If the General Assembly’s purpose in passing Section 1 was to protect younger minors from accessing inappropriate sexual content in libraries and bookstores, the law will only achieve that end at the expense of everyone else’s First Amendment rights. The law deputized librarians and booksellers as the agents of censorship; when motivated by the fear of jail time, it is likely they will shelve only books fit for young children and segregate or discard the rest.”
The plaintiffs, which included the American Booksellers Association, Association of American Publishers, two local Arkansas bookstores and a consortium of local libraries, issued a statement:
“Together with authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians, and readers everywhere, we applaud the Court’s carefully crafted decision upholding the constitutional right to read.”
U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks, who wrote the ruling, said calling something “obscene” or “harmful to minors” was too vague and could lead to interpretations that were arbitrary and content-based, the Arkansas Advocate reported.
He said that the law didn’t provide criteria that was specific enough to allow librarians to avoid being prosecuted even if they thought they were complying.
Supporters of the law deemed the policy necessary to keep pornographic content out of the reach of children, while opponents said the law would be used to “reduce access to content that reflects the general public, such as the LGBTQ+ community,” the Arkansas Advocate said.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said through a spokesperson that he intended to appeal the ruling.
There is much more in the Arkansas Advocate article, written by Tess Vrbin about the history of the legislation and what the Crawford County Library System went through because of complaints over children’s books with LGBTQ+ topics. Read the article here.
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Here’s a little “compare and contrast” regarding Christmas messages:
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I agree that drug usage needs to be disclosed if purchasing a gun — as long as it is applied equally.
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And now ending with a video of the holiday decorations this year at the White House.
Lead art: Screen grab from White House-released video
On Second Thought 