A new Arkansas law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for making 'harmful' materials available to minors.
A federal judge recently issued a preliminary injunction against a new Arkansas law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for making "harmful" materials available to minors.
COULTER: Yes, the centralized library system is the largest public library system in the state. We have about 11% of the state's population. We cover two counties, Pulaski, which is where Little Rock is, and a neighboring mostly rural county, Perry County. We have 17 buildings, about 15 branches. We have a theater, and we have a space downtown that we call our rocket lab for entrepreneurs. And we do a lot of things that libraries have always done.
So the standard in the statute was to treat everyone under 18 the same. That deprives people who are 17, mature minors, of their constitutional right. MIELKE: So it's no longer just a children's wing of the library, but like, let's enforce not letting anyone come in the adult section? Under the statute, until the judge enjoined it, yes, any librarian could have been subjected to prosecution if a parent or someone complaining about it had made the case that they could have been brought up on charges of presenting or making available content that's harmful to a minor.
And if they're made available, if they're on the shelf, as the state conceded, that's theoretically making it available. In a society, in a democracy like ours, we acquire books for a wide diversity of readers and we acquire books with diverse viewpoints. MIELKE: I do wonder, though, if the argument to that is, you have these parents who are upset by the idea - not just that their kid has the opportunity to find books that they have viewpoints they might not agree with, but that these books might also be offered or evangelized to their kid by that helpful librarian or by that helpful bookstore owner who's like, "Hey, you might enjoy this book," or "Hey, you're 17 or you're 15 or you're 12.
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