First Amendment.

The Republicans only know the Second Amendment, the 1st Amendment only gets in their way.

North Dakota Bill Would Jail Librarians for Not Removing Certain Books
Calling books about sexual or gender identity disgusting, a Republican lawmaker seeks to ban them and imprison librarians who don’t comply.
The Advocate
By JD Glass
January 29, 2023


A proposed bill was heard this month in North Dakota's House Judiciary Committee that seeks to ban what it calls sexual content in public libraries and send librarians to jail if they refuse to remove the books in question.

Advocates have called the proposal censorship and "steeped in discrimination."

House Bill 1205 seeks to ban visual depictions of “sexually explicit” content from public libraries, which includes references to sexual orientation and gender identity. Librarians who don’t remove such books would face up to 30 days in prison as well as up to a $1,500 fine, according to the Associated Press.

Um… I think that they a little Constitutional problem. The first they are only picking on LGBTQ books and ignoring other books. The second is, what is the definition of “sexually explicit” content?

The proposal is “a blatant attempt at censorship, pure and simple,” the American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota said.

NBC News wrote,

“Nearly 50 years ago, the (U.S.) Supreme Court set the high constitutional bar that defines obscenity,” said Cody Schuler, an advocacy manager at the American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota, who testified against the bill.

Obscenity is a narrow, well-defined category of unprotected speech that excludes any work with serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value, Schuler said. Few, if any, books have been deemed obscene, and the standard for restraining a library’s ability to distribute a book are even more stringent, Schuler added.

But the Republicans want to make point with their base and they don’t care if it is unconstitutional because they will blame “those liberal activist judges.”