North Dakota lawmakers narrowly passed a bill on Monday that would require most libraries in the state to keep material deemed sexually explicit in areas that are difficult for minors to access. Under the measure, librarians who do not comply could face prosecution.
The legislation is part of a broader push by conservatives to restrict access to library books that they consider inappropriate for children, an effort that has alarmed many librarians and free speech advocates. New library laws or regulations have been approved in recent years in several Republican-led states, including Iowa, Idaho, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah.
The North Dakota measure, which still must go to Gov. Kelly Armstrong, a Republican, is the state’s latest effort to restrict library content. In 2023, former Gov. Doug Burgum, a Republican, signed a measure that required explicit materials to be removed from the children’s sections of libraries. But Mr. Burgum, who is now secretary of the interior, vetoed a bill that would have imposed criminal penalties on librarians found guilty of willfully exposing minors to sexually explicit materials.
The measure passed on Monday was somewhat less punitive. It gives librarians a 10-day period to remove materials that a local prosecutor finds to be obscene. Only if the librarian fails to comply during that period could they face criminal charges.
The bill divided Republicans in the North Dakota House of Representatives, which voted 49 to 45 to pass it. Mike Nowatzki, a spokesman for Mr. Armstrong, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In legislative hearings, Republican supporters defended the bill as a way to protect children from inappropriate or harmful content. Some lawmakers cited examples of North Dakota libraries stocking materials with sexual themes and illustrations that they found offensive, and complained that librarians often failed to take parents’ complaints about books seriously.
“We are harming our children, that’s all there is to it,” State Senator Keith Boehm, a Republican, said in a committee hearing. “The bill is all about protecting kids from this material. It has nothing against adults.”
Others, including a leader of the North Dakota Library Association, described the measure as an unnecessary infringement on librarians’ professional judgment. They defended libraries as places where materials representing a range of viewpoints were available, and warned that some people might abuse the complaint mechanism in the bill.
“It could very well be 500 books submitted all at once,” said Dylan Gonser, who works at a North Dakota library and spoke on behalf of the state library association. “There’s nothing in the bill that would prevent such a thing from happening. And that would take a lot of time, especially for libraries that have one, sometimes less than one, full-time employee.”
The bill would apply to public libraries and libraries in public schools; university libraries and art museums would be exempt. Libraries would be required to remove sexually explicit materials from areas that children could easily access, though such materials could remain available to adults.
The bill would also allow people to submit complaints if they believed an inappropriate book was accessible to children. If the library reviewed that complaint but decided the book could remain on its shelves, that person could then submit a complaint to the local prosecutor. If the prosecutor found the book to be sexually explicit, the library would then have 10 days to remove it from areas that children could reach. If the librarians did not comply, they could be charged with a crime.
