WASHINGTON, USA — A bill making its way through the Washington state Senate seeks to ban a controversial action from schools: banning books.
House Bill 2331 essentially bans schools in Washington state from banning books about marginalized groups. If passed, the bill would prevent local school boards from making policies to ban classroom or library materials that focus on "a legally protected class."
Washington state law defines a protected class as "persons between the ages of forty and seventy, persons of any race, creed, color, national origin, sex, or marital status, and persons who are handicapped."
The bill was introduced to the Washington state House on Jan. 12. After its third reading on Feb. 10, the bill passed the House in a 58-39 vote. All Democrats voted in favor of the bill, while all Republicans voted against it.
The bill was sent to the state Senate on Wednesday and was referred to the Early Learning & K-12 Education Committee. It's currently scheduled for review during the committee's upcoming executive session on Feb. 19.
Last November, the Liberty Lake City Council proposed a revised ordinance, 119-D, that would give the city council more say over the library and its policies. A prior version of the ordinance passed in May but, within days, died after Mayor Cris Kaminskas vetoed it. The mayor's veto cited confusing wording, especially a section that prohibited the council from initiating a book ban.
She also voiced concerns that the council didn't listen to the public, who were often vocal in hours' worth of public comment.
Some Liberty Lake residents spoke out on continued concerns the "oversight" was a thinly veiled attempt at censorship and an avenue to ban books, with the removal of that language in the new version prompting some to say it now leaves that door wide open.
Council member Annie Kurtz said citizen concerns about banning books are not unfounded, as many supporters of the ordinance, mostly emails, specifically mention doing so.
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Attempted book bans and restrictions at school and public libraries hit a record high in 2022, and appear to be continuing the trend for 2023, according to the American Library Association (ALA).
Preliminary data from Jan. 1 to Aug. 31, 2023, shows 695 attempts to censor library materials and services nationwide. The ALA also documented challenges to 1,915 unique titles, a 20% increase from the same reporting period in 2022.
The majority of challenges were to books "written by or about a person of color or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community," according to the ALA.
More than 1,200 challenges were compiled by the association in 2022, nearly double the then-record total from 2021 and by far the most since the ALA began keeping data 20 years ago.
In 2022, more than 2,500 different books were objected to, compared to 1,858 in 2021 and just 566 in 2019. In numerous cases, hundreds of books were challenged in a single complaint. The ALA bases its findings on media accounts and voluntary reporting from libraries and acknowledges that the numbers might be far higher.
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