‘We are not getting rid of books’: How libraries across Idaho are implementing new materials law

(Idaho Capital Sun) — On a cool Friday in late May, Donnelly Public Library Director Sherry Scheline welcomed four kids who had just gotten off the bus from school.

Their parent had a flat tire 40 minutes away from town and could not make it home to meet them. 

Scheline made sure they had food and water and contacted their parent while the kids waited.

The rural library is known for being a community hub — especially for children seeking a place to stay after school as they wait for their parents to get off work, or for a place to stay during winter and summer. 

But in response to a new Idaho law that took effect July 1, the library is transitioning to adults-only. Under the new rules, library staff won’t let kids in unless a parent is present with them at all times, a parent signs paperwork allowing their child to enter only for programming, or a parent waives their rights under the new law and lets their child check out materials without a parent present.

“This change is painful, and not what we had hoped for at all,” library staff wrote in a letter posted on Facebook. 

House Bill 710 — passed in April, following years of similar attempts by the Idaho Legislature — requires Idaho public and school libraries to move materials deemed harmful to children, or face lawsuits. 

That’s if libraries don’t move materials within 60 days of receiving a request to relocate the material “to a section designated for adults only.”

​​“I can assure you that there is no book banning, and there’s no book burning and there’s no book removal anywhere in this legislation,” bill sponsor Rep. Jaron Crane, R-Nampa, said in a committee hearing. 

Libraries across Idaho are reworking policies to comply with the new law that some call vague. But many are waiting to see if there’d be a formal challenge to books in their collections — which they said community members have rarely filed before the law. 

Some libraries planned and then canceled new policies limiting access. 

At the Idaho Falls Public Library, minors couldn’t access public computers for a few days. The library soon rolled the policy back. And in rural eastern Idaho, the Preston library scrapped renovation plans for a monitored adult section.

Rural Idaho libraries say bill disproportionately impacts them

Each time Scheline has testified in opposition to library restriction bills before the Legislature, she has said the same thing. 

“Don’t make laws that disproportionately impact small and rural libraries,” she told the Idaho Capital Sun. 

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Scheline said the library is not getting rid of any books. But, all materials are now considered adult material because the one-room library does not have enough room to separate the material.

“A few things will change,” she said. “(Youth) won’t be coming into the library, but I will never turn away a child who needs food. I will never turn away a child who is cold. I will never turn away a child who needs reading material and will make sure that we have free books available for them just to take.”

So where will the children go if they can’t go inside the building? In the two teepees outside where there are no books, Scheline said. She said she hopes the library will one day expand. 

Like the Donnelly library, the Buhl Public Library is also a small, one-room library. 

Maegan Hanson, the Buhl library director, said her library has not made significant changes to its policies since children already cannot have their own cards until they turn 18 and are on their parents’ or guardians’ account until then. 

However, she said the new law has taken a toll on the morale of her and her staff. 

“Librarians are still expected to continue to perform and to do everything that we’ve been expected to do with less funds, less support, quadrupling the workload, and the mental load of how do we get ahead of this as much as possible? Can we get ahead of this?” Hanson told the Sun.

Hanson said she is waiting to get more clarification because the law was “so vaguely written.”

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In rural eastern Idaho, the Larsen-Sant Public Library in Preston initially planned to temporarily close for construction of a staff-monitored adults-only section in response to the new law.

But after consulting with an attorney, the library backed out of construction plans, Director Laura Wheatley told the Sun.

The one-room library has a wall separating the children’s section — with stuffed animals lining the bookshelves — from its adults section. To renovate for the new law, library staff planned to move a stack of books to the wall to close off one entrance to its adult section. One staff member would monitor who came and went.

“I thought that’s how, as I read the bill, what we were going to have to do,” Wheatley told the Sun.

The attorney had told them that she didn’t feel the library had materials that would meet the legal test to be determined “harmful to minors,” Wheatley said, and advised against building an adults-only section or moving materials.

“We’re just going to be open how we are. And we’ll find out with time if (what our attorney) told us stands, or whether we’re going to be in trouble,” Wheatley said.

Each year, Wheatley estimates about two or three books prompt a parent to reach out to Preston library staff. But Wheatley said no patrons filed formal complaints over materials in Preston’s library in the over a decade since she’s served as library director.

“Maybe we’re going to have to have some lawsuits against us. I don’t know,” Wheatley said. “But I’m a mother. I’m a grandmother. I care about kids. I don’t want children to be harmed. But I don’t feel a book helping someone understand why some families have two moms or two dads is a harmful thing because it’s a reality of what their child has seen.”

‘We’re in new territory here’

About an hour away, the public library in Soda Springs is 4,300 square feet. Children’s bookshelves line the walls on the main level. Tucked behind the library’s front office is the adult fiction section.

That’s not to comply with legislation, Director Cindy Erickson told the Sun. It’s because adult fiction is the Soda Springs Public Library’s most frequently checked out genre, she said. 

The library has updated its book challenge form to comply with the new law. But Erickson said patrons hadn’t filed a formal complaint about library content in the 23 years that she has directed the library.

Concerns about sexually explicit material have been settled with “diplomacy and good neighborness,” she said. But now, she worries House Bill 710 puts the library at risk of lawsuits, or “anybody wanting to make a quick buck.”

“We will just have, as we always have had, all eyes and ears on all of the sections of our library. And I hope that’s enough. It may be. It may not be. I do not know. I think we’re in new territory here,” Erickson said. “It makes me very sad.”

How are bigger Idaho libraries interpreting House Bill 710? 

For a few days this month, people under age 18 couldn’t use public computers anymore at the Idaho Falls Public Library, library director Robert Wright told the Sun. 

The library first adopted the policy because it couldn’t filter for the new law’s definitions, Wright said. But the library soon rolled the policy back, as staff saw how much it “interrupted library operations for disadvantaged and marginalized patrons,” Wright said.

“We just felt like it would be better for the community to allow it until someone complains,” Wright said.

A year ago, in response to parent complaints about materials, the Idaho Falls library rolled out tiered library cards. Those let parents decide what kinds of library materials their kids can access, from the children section on the first floor to the adult and young adult sections on the library’s third floor.

Now, in response to the new law, the library is adding a stop-sign-like sign to its third floor.

Until last year, challenges to books at Idaho Falls Public Library were largely informal, Wright told the Sun. In his 20 years at the library, he said there were maybe two each year, and only one requested to remove a book from the library.

But last year, the Idaho Falls library got 21 complaints from a group called Parents Against Bad Books. Most of the books the group requested for “reconsideration” dealt with LGBTQ+ or race issues, Wright told the Sun.

The debate over library materials has weighed on some of Wright’s staff, who have been called “purveyors of pornography,” “groomers” and “child molesters.”

“That’s very hurtful,” he said. 

Wright said his young adult librarian worries about children and teenagers who are already struggling — from rough homelives, sexual abuse or toxic relationships.

Books can help show them situations they’re in, and provide a way out, Wright said.

“If they’re in a bad family domestic situation, they’re not going to be allowed to read that. Because whoever is abusing them doesn’t want them to learn how to get out of that,” Wright said. 

But some Idaho libraries in more populated areas have not significantly changed policy. 

The Coeur d’Alene Public Library updated its material review policy, material selection policy and relocation request form to comply with the new law, but its director said the changes are minor.

Michael Priest, the director who recently resigned from the Coeur d’Alene Public Library to be closer to his family in New Zealand, said it is still too early to predict the impact of House Bill 710. He said the library board will “take a flexible approach” to update its policies moving forward.

Mary DeWalt, director of the Ada County Community Library and vice president of the Idaho Library Association, said her library updated its reconsideration policies to align with House Bill 710, but the library’s operations are not changing.

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The biggest challenge with the law is knowing if they are implementing it correctly, she said. 

“There’s so much vague language in the law that no one really knows exactly how to interpret it,” she said.

How does the new law’s legal test for obscene materials work?

The Miller Test, used by the new law, is a three-pronged test to legally determine if a work is considered obscene. Established by the Supreme Court in 1973, the Miller Test evaluates if a material appeals to “prurient” or excessive sexual interests, if it is patently offensive, and if the work lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. 

DeWalt said she is confident the Ada County Community Library’s book selection does not violate those standards. 

“We don’t carry porn,” DeWalt said. 

The law relies on Idaho’s existing definition of materials harmful to minors, which includes “any act of … homosexuality” under its definition of sexual conduct. 

To Wright, that isn’t well defined.

“Is it two men holding hands? Is it two women holding hands? Is it a woman kissing another woman on the cheek?” Wright asked.

“We’re going to just ignore that part and see if we get complaints. We’re going to continue to serve our entire community. And we’ll see how that falls out,” Wright said.

Erickson says she interprets that line in the law to mean “we are not crossing over a line as we operate now.”

For smaller libraries, without a lot of funds, it’s easy to “overreact,” Wright said. The law allows $250 statutory damages for suing patrons. But that isn’t the sticking point for libraries, he said.

“It’s the attorney fees that are going to kill you, right?” Wright said.

Group behind bill says law is ‘clear and understandable’

A conservative Christian advocacy group, the Idaho Family Policy Center, has led efforts to restrict library material access to Idaho youth in recent years. This year, the group celebrated the passage of House Bill 710.

In written comments to the Idaho Capital Sun, the center’s policy analyst, Grace Howat, pushed back on claims that the law is vague.

“While there are many ways a library can comply, one easy and inexpensive solution is to place pornographic books in a small, locked bookshelf behind the main desk,” Howat said. “This allows librarians to effectively prevent children from accessing these materials.”

The organization drafted most of the bill’s language, and trained some legislators who sponsored the bill, Howat told the Sun. The policy center also helped connect about 10,000 Idahoans with legislators and the governor asking them to support the bill through alerts over email, text and robocalls, she said.  

Librarians in Idaho have consistently told lawmakers that they do not carry porn. 

And rural librarians testified the bill would strain their already limited spaces if they had to move materials to “a section designated for adults only,” as required in the law to avoid lawsuits. 

The Idaho Family Policy Center disagrees. 

“There is simply no requirement that they separate adult and children’s sections or take any other unreasonable measures,” she said. 

Howat said the policy center is “disappointed” in the Donnelly Public Library’s new policy, calling it a way to use “children as pawns in its political games.”

“The law, which codifies obscenity tests used by the Supreme Court for more than 50 years, is both clear and understandable,” she told the Sun. “There’s simply no rational reason why they would need to restrict children’s access to the entire library.”

Bill co-sponsor Sen. Cindy Carlson, R-Riggins, told the Sun there are no plans to address what librarians say is “vague” language in the law. 

Carlson said she doesn’t “particularly care” for Donnelly Library’s waiver policy, and said Idaho lawmakers should be on a mission to help educate and increase youth literacy.

“The intention of the legislation was to protect the innocent minds of underage children,” she said.