Montana librarians, educators, and museum professionals are under attack from the Montana Legislature. HB 234 would subject every employee of a school or library to criminal prosecution under obscenity laws for the books, ebooks, and educational resources in their library. For museums, it means that they could be prosecuted for obscenity for paintings and sculptures in their care. School boards, library boards, and even the volunteer members of a museum or art gallery board would be caught up in this legislative overreach.
HB 234 would criminalize our librarians, teachers, and museum staff for following the guidance of their locally-elected library and school boards. Since the 1980s, Montana law has guaranteed that politicians, moral crusaders, and censorship activists can't target school teachers and librarians over allegations of obscenity. HB 234 would make those public employees subject to 6 months of jail time and costly lawsuits over anything a person might find “obscene”, from classic literature to anatomy textbooks.
We are all concerned with creating positive, safe, and welcoming environments for our children. But going after public libraries, schools, and museums like this means that this isn't about kids. It's about a small group of people controlling what Montanans can read or see. Only 8% of voters in the US think that there are "many books that are inappropriate and should be banned". It is a small group of people pushing for these kinds of bills in Montana and around the country. They talk about books about sex and sexuality, but award-winning authors like Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, and F. Scott Fitzgerald have been challenged for being obscene. Even Winnie the Pooh was called into question for not wearing pants. We cannot let a bill like HB234 open every school, library, and museum - and the public servants who keep them running - up to criminal prosecution to satisfy a few crusaders.
It's not a reasonable thing to make criminals out of our librarians and educators. Please join the Montana Library Association and EveryLibrary in opposing HB234 now. The bill is being heard in the House Judiciary Committee. Please take a moment and tell your Representative in the Montana House to help stop this bill before it goes any further. Use the form on this page to send your message today.