Human Rights

Sarah Huckabee Sanders Signs Law That Would Jail Librarians for Giving Banned Books to Kids — It’s Not Going Well for Her

If gay-hating Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders thought it was going to be easy to impose a new law that threatens librarians with jail time for providing banned books (gay, in other words) to children, she’d better guess again.

She’s now being sued by a coalition of librarians, booksellers, authors, and readers who are challenging The Arkansas Act 372. The lawsuit was filed Friday by a group that includes the Arkansas Library Association, and the Central Arkansas Library System, Queerty reports.

The Arkansas Act, which Sanders signed into law in March, is incredibly draconian, threatening librarians with as much as a year in jail if they are caught giving kids banned books. The coalition accuses the legislation of violating the state’s 1st and 14th amendments.

“Library workers across Arkansas are rightly concerned that the overly broad edicts of Act 372 will prevent them from serving their patrons as they have always done, by providing a wide variety of materials to fill their information needs, and perhaps more importantly, materials that allow each child to see themselves in the books in their library,” wrote Carol Coffey, president of the Arkansas Library Association, in a statement.

Mind you, Arkansas is the fourth poorest state in the U.S. It is dealing with a growing affordable housing crisis, and overwhelming food insecurity. And according to a recent Scholaroo study found the state ranks 49th in the nation regarding quality of life, and 50th in the nation regarding health.

You’d think Huckabee Sanders would focus on this, but nope. She’s not. Since being elected in January, hating on the LGBTQ+ community has been her top priority. So much so, in fact, that she appointed Jacob Oliva, the dude who is responsible for implementing Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, to head the Arkansas Department of Education and then signed a law prohibiting trans teachers and students from using school bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identities.

She even went as far as to sign an executive order that prevents “indoctrination” in classrooms. The order prohibits teachers from respecting a student’s pronouns. Teachers are also not allowed to talk about sexuality, gender, or race. Even the gender-neutral term “Latinx” is banned.

Then there’s the stupid line of transphobic beer koozies that she recently released.

Because in a state buried under the weight of poverty, mounting food insecurity, and exploding housing costs what people really need right now are beer koozies with her mug plastered on them. But is what she’s doing really called governing? She’s imposing her own will on people and doing nothing to solve the towering problems her state is faced with.

But Arkansans voted her in so I guess they get what they deserve. They’ll be safe from learning about the people living within their own community. No learning about Black history or LGBTQ+ history in the U.S. And this is a real tragedy.

Arkansans have now officially won the booby prize.

meet the author

Megan has lived in California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida and she currently lives in Central America. Living in these places has informed her writing on politics, science, and history. She is currently owned by 15 cats and 3 dogs and regularly owns Trump supporters when she has the opportunity. She can be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GaiaLibra and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/politicalsaurus

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