by Ty Tagami | Capitol Beat News Service
Georgia Senate Republicans are trying again to strip librarians of their immunity from a law against distributing pornography to minors.
A law dating back to the 1960s makes it illegal to distribute materials to minors deemed to be “harmful” to them. Librarians were exempted from the law during the 1980s.
Senate Bill 74, which the Senate Education and Youth Committee approved Tuesday, would take away that exemption. The bill is the latest of several efforts Senate Republicans have made during the last several years to apply the law to librarians.
Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania, the chief sponsor of SB 74, said at a hearing on the measure that it made no sense to require staff at convenience and book stores to discern what content is harmful while absolving trained experts of that responsibility.
“I love libraries,” said Burns, who has worked as an administrator and a professor in higher education in Georgia. “I encourage people to use libraries. But it does not make any sense for us to exempt the very people who should best know what would be harmful to children.”
Although SB 74 would expose librarians to prosecution, it would afford all library staff a way to defend themselves if they accidentally allow harmful material into the hands of a minor. They must have “knowingly” let it happen to be found guilty.
The bill now moves to the Senate Rules Committee to schedule a vote of the full Senate.
