By Seth Boyes,
Seth Boyes, News Editor
The last couple weeks were particularly dizzying for me as I glanced at the bills being introduced in Des Moines. It’s hard to keep up with every single idea that gets thrown out there under the capitol’s dome, and things will eventually get winnowed down in the weeks to come.
But bills that affect public libraries often catch my attention.
You see, as the son of a public librarian and a high school science teacher, I know public employees are often overworked and underappreciated (so, of course, I went into journalism to experience both for myself in the private sector). But all joking aside, when our local library says it doesn’t have the staff to ensure compliance with a new proposed state law, and would have to scale things back to solely children’s materials if it becomes law, I believe them.
As you’ll read elsewhere in this week’s edition, a couple of bills have been introduced in the Iowa legislature which would prohibit public libraries from purchasing materials that include descriptions or visual depictions of sex and would bar libraries from knowingly providing obscene material to minors — I’ll assume the authors were genuinely attempting to accomplish a worthwhile goal, even if Iowa law already prohibits libraries from distributing such things to minors. Plus, I’ve never met a librarian who was somehow consumed with the idea of putting adult material in a child’s hands.
But it’s the financial implications of the legislation that drew most of my concern.
It would also make way for financial penalties and civil litigation against the city or county which founded the library, if a complaint filed by a parent – specific dollar figures would vary depending on the timeframe in question, but the penalties would start at a figure that’s more than 47 times the fine assessed in the state of Iowa for public intoxication. Now, I hear you — there’s no need to worry about penalties and fees, so long as libraries don’t violate the law.
But I don’t think that’s quite true.
I might have missed something, but it seems that, even though the bill requires a court to award a parent or guardian reasonable attorney fees if they’re civil case is successful, it doesn’t actually require the court to do the same for the library if the parent’s complaint is found to be complete bunk.
That sends up a bit of a red flag in my mind, having seen some of my fellow journalists get hit with what’s sometimes called a SLAPP lawsuit — or strategic lawsuit against public participation. You see, people don’t file SLAPP lawsuits because they’re convinced they’ve got a rock-solid case. They file them as a tactic to exhaust their target by effectively forcing them to either agree to a settlement and end the matter or be potentially be crushed under the weight of mounting legal costs before the case ever reaches a court.
It’s a favored tactic of individuals and organizations with plenty of money to throw around.
It’s a purchased victory when the system might’ve otherwise resulted in defeat.
And I think the legislation currently being considered by state lawmakers could easily expose public libraries in Iowa to similar tactics by folks who have strong feelings about what other library patrons should and shouldn’t have access to.
But just for the sake of argument, let’s run through a different scenario.
Let’s assume for a moment our local librarians somehow have the time to leaf through every page of Veronica Roth’s “Divergent” trilogy, but they overlook a page in the third installment which reads “I am like the blade and he is like the whetstone.” Let’s assume they read Ole Rolvaag’s “Giants in the Earth” — which was at one point required reading for Luther College students, if it isn’t still — but the library staff doesn’t quite read closely enough to catch the sentence “That night, Per Hansa was good to his wife.”
You might say those passages aren’t depictions of sex as defined by the state of Iowa. I’m not a legal scholar, but you might be right. However, the proposed legislation doesn’t require a parent establish a violation has occurred before a complaint is filed. Admittedly, the bill does say those complaints are to be filed with the appropriate local board first, and the issue can advance to a civil court after 30 days if the library continues to commit the alleged violation.
But, again, the bill doesn’t actually say what would happen if the local board finds a complaint didn’t carry water in the first place (lord knows I’ve taken enough phone calls over the years from people who delivered scathing criticism of something they allegedly read on our pages, only to discover they themselves hadn’t even bothered to make sure they were calling the right newspaper). So, in my own humble estimation, public libraries and the cities which operate them could still be on the hook for legal expenses, even if they’re ultimately vindicated by a board or a court. Which leads me to wonder just how many complaints – valid or not – it would take before our local library would no longer be able to cover their operating costs.
Now, I’ll give our lawmakers the benefit of a doubt and assume the intent of these bills wasn’t to close community libraries. However, that such a result doesn’t seem entirely outside the realm of possibility. To paraphrase something a former county supervisor taught me a few years back, when it comes to government, it doesn’t matter what you intended when you wrote a law or policy, it matters what you actually put down on paper – that is to say, poorly written laws can have unintended consequences.
And what’s on paper at the moment in Des Moines could herald a different kind of silence in the library than I imagine our local librarians typically have in mind. It’s a silence which would leave many readers with only the materials of which our government approves – and that’s a frightening precedent, in my opinion.
“O, that way madness lies.”
That’s a line from Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” by the way. You might want to look it up before state law changes, because I don’t even want to try and count how many overly-frilly and cryptic descriptions of sex the bard worked into his plays.
Agree with Seth? Think he’s got it completely backwards or he’s missed the point entirely? Let your voice be heard. Letters to the editor may be emailed to editor@decorahleader.com or dropped off at 110 Washington St. Suite 4 in Decorah.
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