Background: House Bill 1239 would hold school, college, university, museum or public library employees liable for disseminating materials “harmful to minors.”
Our position: The ACLU of South Dakota opposes House Bill 1239.
To be sure, no one is going to agree on the merits of every book on a library’s shelf. But we are steadfast in our belief that we do not get to decide what others read – and neither should the government.
Nearly 50 years ago, the Supreme Court set the high constitutional bar that defines obscenity — a narrow, well-defined category of unprotected speech that excludes any work with serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. Since then, few if any books have been deemed obscene. And the standards for restraining a library’s ability to distribute a book are even more stringent.
The First Amendment’s guarantee of the freedom of speech and the right to access information has created a beautiful marketplace of ideas in our country. Each of us gets to choose what books we read and what information we access — but we don’t get to choose for other people. Doing so is un-American and unconstitutional.
