Oklahoma bill would allow any parent to ban book and collect $10,000 per day if it's not removed from school
An Oklahoma lawmaker has introduced a bill that would give any parent the power to ban books in school districts. The legislation also empowers parents to collect at least $10,000 for each day a book is not removed.
State Sen. Rob Standridge (R) introduced Senate Bill 1142, which would allow parents to request that a book be removed from libraries in a school district.
The bill bans all books "that make as their primary subject the study of sex, sexual preferences, sexual activity, sexual perversion, sex-based classifications, sexual identity, or gender identity or books that are of a sexual nature that a reasonable parent or legal guardian would want to know of or approve of prior to their child being exposed to it."
If a parent believes a book violates the guidelines, they would be able to request in writing that it be removed from the library.
A school employee who fails to remove the book within 30 days of the request "shall be dismissed or not reemployed."
Parents "may seek monetary damages including a minimum of Ten Thousand Dollars ($10,000.00) per day the book requested for removal is not removed, reasonable attorney fees, and court costs," the bill states.
Standridge said that he has concerns about books like “Trans Teen Survival Guide,” “Quick and Easy Guide to Queer and Trans Identities, “A Quick and Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns,” and “The Art of Drag,” according to McAlester News-Capital.
“Most likely these things will end up in court,” Standridge explained. “My guess is the schools won’t comply and the parents will have to seek injunctive relief. That will be up to the trier of fact. They may well disagree with the parent and say reasonable parents would want their children to be exposed to transgender, queer and other sexually-related books. I would doubt that.”
State Rep. Jacob Rosecrants (D) warned that the bill could ban any book containing the word "sex."
“They say on the other side that they’re trying to stop indoctrination,” Rosecrants told the News-Capital. “This looks to me like it is indoctrination. When you’re trying to say what somebody should or shouldn’t do or somebody should or shouldn’t read, isn’t that the epitome of that?”
“I think it’s just trying to feed into the fearmongering that it looks like the GOP really is going for here,” he added. “My big thing, and it’s strange that a Democrat should be saying this, is shouldn’t we just leave these decisions to local (school) boards? It looks to me like this is some type of government overreach, massive when it comes from the party of smaller government. It blows me away.”
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