Utah officials are finalizing a list of books for removal from school districts that parents have deemed inappropriate for their K-12 education system.
In March, Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) signed legislation allowing school districts to remove books from academic libraries with pornographic or indecent materials. The law also applies retroactively to all books banned before July 1, when it will go into effect.
The new law requires at least three school districts, or two school districts and five charter schools, to agree that the book in question amounts to objective sensitive material before the sexually explicit materials are removed from school libraries statewide. As the final authority on the new policy, the Utah State Board of Education can override the districts’ decision.
The law also breaks challenged books into two categories. A book determined to contain “objective” sensitive material can be removed from school district libraries statewide. However, a book determined to only contain “subjective” material that doesn’t meet the state’s definition of pornography or “indecent public displays,” but is considered “harmful” to children, will only be removed from local school libraries. Books successfully challenged will not be banned from public libraries. They will be removed from K-12 school libraries.
Republican state Rep. Ken Ivory, the legislator who originally spearheaded the bill, said the books targeted for removal in schools could be safely categorized as obscene.
“This is not Catcher in the Rye or To Kill a Mockingbird,” Ivory said in February. “This is in many cases, openly illustrated sex acts.”
A group of Utah mothers Ivory gathered agreed as they read excerpts from books they wanted removed from children’s school libraries.
“’But he clamped his hands over her mouth, and d**** h***** and h******,’” read one Utah mother, Gloria Vindas. She refused to finish the passage, saying, “I think you can see how it triggers a lot of trauma in this room.”
USBE member Emily Green commented that the law “in essence, protect[s] children from being distributed explicit materials funded under the taxpayer dollar through our public education system.”
Another USBE member, Carol Lear, disagreed, calling the materials in question necessary “because kids are so desperate to get a hold of information that they, apparently, aren’t getting from parents. She added, “I have a hard time taking this [law] seriously. And frankly, I hope this is so bad that someone sues.”
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Other critics of laws similar to Utah’s new legislation have slammed them as “book bans.” In April, Maryland passed a law banning “book bans”, saying such actions stemmed from “partisan, ideological, or religious disapproval.” Florida has also come under fire for its actions to remove qualifying books from its K-12 system.
Skeptics say the Sunshine State’s law infringes on First Amendment rights. Advocates have pushed back, claiming that books including the Fifty Shades of Grey series and graphically pornographic books such as Gender Queer and All Boys Aren’t Blue are freely accessible at public bookstores and online but shouldn’t be easily available to children at their school libraries.