Legislature Passes Censorship Bill

House Bill 1205 aims to prohibit explicit sexual material within public libraries through a revision of the North Dakota Century Code’s Obscenity Control. On April 26th, 2022, after the bill went through corresponding legislative chambers, Governor Burgum signed the bill.

House Bill 1205 may qualify Mandan High School’s library as public. In turn, the bill will remove select titles from the collection and prevent the addition of future titles that contain explicit sexual material.

On October 11th, 2022, The Dickinson Public Library Board, at their monthly meeting, were met with about ninety community members to debate if the book, “Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human” by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan, was appropriate for the Dickinson Public Library.

Following these events, the book was taken under review, but is now featured in the Dickinson Public Library’s collection under the classification of young adult literature.

“In Dickinson, there were probably at least one hundred and two books that had similar-type messages of sexual freedom for children who were very young,” North Dakota Representative Vicky Steiner said.

House Bill 1205 enacts a new section into chapter 12.1-27.1 of the North Dakota Century Code. This new section would forbid titles that contain explicit sexual material in public libraries’ collections.

“The headlines are always ‘banning books.’ It is not about banning books. It is about having appropriate books in the library about sexual topics for the right age of children,” Steiner said. “When these books cross the line. It comes to the legislature, because citizens can’t get resolution in their local community. They ask their legislator, ‘please draft a bill!’”

Explicit sexual material applies to any material which: taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest of minors.

“Under this legislation, when a book is taken as a whole, if it has one story in the middle that is not the whole substance of the book, this legislation will not apply to it,” North Dakota Senator Keith Boehm said. “I hear these stories, ‘they’re gonna take the Bible out,’ absolutely not true.”

Additionally, explicit sexual material pertains to any material that is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community in North Dakota as a whole, with respect to what is suitable material for minors and lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

“The most damaging thing about the bills is this idea that any single person can walk into a library and say, ‘I think this is perverted,’” Library Patron Beth Schatz Kaylor said. “The librarian just has to remove it. If they do not, because the librarian does not agree based on the basic American Library Association principles of good library collection that we, as a nation, have agreed upon. That’s troubling on a deep level.”

North Dakota’s public libraries will have to develop a policy and process for library collection review that conform to the requirements of the section by January 1st, 2024.

“The only way to really and truly be sure that these books meet the criteria in the bills, would be to read them cover-to-cover,” Mandan Morton Public Library Librarian Michaela Schaff said. “The State Library did research on how fast the average adult reads. By averaging how long a typical fiction and nonfiction book is, they found the collection the state library curates would require one hundred more full-time staff members just to read within the deadline.”

In protest of this bill, a read-in was hosted by Schatz Kaylor, at the Bismarck Public Library on March 2nd, 2023. About two hundred participants protested while reading in silent solidarity for a half-an-hour.

“I just wanted to do something to allow people to come together, and peacefully voice their perspective. When I became the spokesperson for this, I was expecting some blow back. Honestly, I got much more words of support than the few words of question.” Schatz Kaylor said. “You see these things in other states, and it feels like there’s an outside influence coming in and trying to push that here. It’s really strange the legislature is so focused on pushing these through.”

This legislation may its effect on Mandan High School’s library.

“I do think they are gonna push to pertain to schools,” Mandan High School Librarian Scheryl Bjordahl said. “It has the possibility of being a big problem, and it has the possibility of being a little problem for us. I think for public libraries, it’s a big problem.”