The Guardian

‘Criminal liability for librarians’: the fight against US rightwing book bans

In the classic comedy Blackadder, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger demanded “tougher sentences for geography teachers”. So much for satire. In the real world, US Republican politicians are now seeking “criminal liability for librarians”.

To Skye Perryman, president and chief executive of the nonprofit Democracy Forward, as absurd as rightwing book bans can seem (a Florida claim that the Arthur books can “damage the souls” of children a particularly florid example), this is no laughing matter at all.

She says: “In Arkansas, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders that would have done a number of things, including creating

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