Two bills — HB4 and SB6 — have been refiled by Alabama lawmakers ahead of the 2025 legislative session which would continue the push for increased government control over local public libraries.
SB6
SB6 was refiled last week by Alabama Senator Chris Elliot, a Republican from Baldwin County. It would grant city and/or local officials the ability to remove members of local library boards at their discretion by a two-thirds vote.
Elliot originally filed the bill last year on the heels of a statewide campaign from “parental rights” groups such as Clean Up Alabama and Tampa and Florida based Moms for Liberty to remove books containing LGBT content and characters from public libraries. The bill was approved with amendments by the Alabama Senate, but did not pass through the House of Representatives.
Elliot said his goal with the bill is to introduce a local level of accountability to local library boards.
“My goal is very simply to make sure library board members are accountable to the people who appoint them and that they can be removed if the elected body deems that necessary,” Elliot said. “It puts that control at the local level. What’s good in Cullman may be different than what’s good in Orange Beach. Let’s let the local officials make those decisions.”
The reintroduced bill contains Senate amendments made to the original bill, but discards suggested language from the House, Elliot said. One of which states:
“Each library board created pursuant to this section, no later than December 31 of each year, shall provide to the Governor, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and President Pro Temper of the Senate a report detailing the membership of the board and any actions the board has taken regarding the review or removal of items in their collection during the previous 12 months.”
Elliot said he wasn’t able to remember which lawmaker requested that language be added to the bill, but said he didn’t believe the addition to be “problematic.”
Elliot said he did not want the state to become involved in “censorship or determining what’s appropriate,” but hopes that by handing the reigns to local officials they could be more capable of mitigating any potential issues.
The bill does not contain any safeguards to prevent localized censorship campaigns.
“My goal is expressly for local elected officials to have the ability to influence their library boards by having them to continue to serve or not. I want the will of local elected officials to be what is paramount here,” Elliot said.
HB4
What Cullman County library advocate and Read Freely Alabama member Krysti Shallenburger called the “jail the librarians” bill is an amended version of HB385, sponsored last year by Rep. Arnold Mooney, a Republican from Indian Springs, which removes the current exemptions libraries have under Alabama anti-obscenity laws and expands the statutory definition of “sexual conduct” to include:
“Any sexual or gender-oriented conduct, presentation or activity that knowingly exposes a minor to a person who is dressed in sexually revealing, exaggerated, or provocative clothing or costumes, who is stripping or who is engaged in lewd or lascivious dancing.”
As of press time, Mooney has not returned messages seeking comment.
The bill was championed by CUA and Moms for Liberty members last year and passed through the House without issue, but was never brought to the Senate floor for a vote.
Changes made to the reintroduced bill include a more defined process and timeline for complaints to be filed with local library boards. Upon receiving a notice from any county resident, libraries would have 15 business days to:
— Move material identified in the notice that violates this division to an age-restricted area of the library.
— Remove material in the notice that violates this division from the library.
— Cease conduct in the notice that violates this division.
— Make an official determination that the material or conduct does not violate this division and take no further action.
Assistant director of the Cullman County Public Library Shelby Creekmore said library systems already have existing policies in place to review book challenges which involve each board member thoroughly reviewing the content. She said she had not reviewed the reintroduced bill when The Times reached her by phone Wednesday afternoon, but said she believed 15 days might not be a feasible amount of time to conduct an effective review.
“Fifteen days is a pretty short amount of time to be able to get a group of people together and have them actually read whatever books have been challenged. I will say that we have a library board that is incredibly supportive, but depending on how long a book is, how many books have been challenged, etc, 15 days could be a pretty big time crunch for some people,” Creekmore said.
Shallenberger said while the voices of these “parental rights” organizations may have been amplified, she did not believe the views which they expressed were shared by the majority of Alabamians, but were instead reflecting those of national political public interest groups.
“This has nothing to do with sexual content in the library,” Shallenburger said. “There isn’t any porn or obscenity in public libraries that matches the current legal definitions. They are seeking to upend the law to provide an incredibly narrow view of that definition which frankly adheres to only a very extreme part of fundamentalism. This not a view that is popular or widely held by progressives or conservatives in Alabama. This is a minority but they have been incredibly loud and incredibly aggressive.”
Chairman of the Alabama Republican Party and Alabama Public Library Service board member John Wahl said in an interview with The Times last year, that he would much prefer any issues with libraries be handled administratively rather than criminally.
““I have always wanted to see this issue addressed by the APLS. I feel as though that is that appropriate government authority. I understand the legislator’s concern and them getting them involved, but hopefully we can get this addressed in the code changes of the state library board and get that done properly so people can clearly see the structure and what needs to happen concerning state funding,” Wahl said.”
A federal injunction has currently blocked a similar statute as a lawsuit challenging the Arkansas law awaits its trial date scheduled to take place in October. The “Project 2025 playbook” — a 920 list of policy recommendations from The Heritage Foundation with input from the conservative think tank Alabama Policy Institute — includes similar recommendations.
“The people who produce and distribute [“pornography”] should be imprisoned. Educators and public libraries who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders,” the document reads.
Shallenberger said she hoped lawmakers would once again reject the bill to represent what she believed to be a much more accurate depiction of Alabama values.
“These people do not respect Alabama’s diversity, they do not respect the Constitutional rights of Alabamians to receive information, they do not respect parental rights except when it serves their own interests and they do not respect the ability for children and young adults to be able to read their own stories in a public libraries,” Shallenberger said.