Last month, Rhode Island legislators introduced the Freedom to Read Act in the R.I. General Assembly. If passed, the bill would protect library materials from government censorship and shield librarians from some lawsuits over the collections they curate.
The introduction of the bill comes amid federal support for book bans by Trump administration officials. Book bans have also gained renewed traction in R.I., where activist groups and individuals have sought to ban 28 book titles in recent years. Proponents of these bans often cite concerns about themes of sexuality, race and identity that some parents deem inappropriate to expose their children to.
“Free libraries are critical to the enlightenment of the citizenry and to the advancement of democracy,” State Sen. Mark McKenney (D-Warwick), sponsor of the bill, said at a March 12 R.I. Senate Education Committee hearing.
The act expands a similar bill that was passed in the 2024 legislative session with additional protections for librarians and school and public libraries, according to McKenney. The 2024 bill died in the General Assembly without a vote in the House.
Anyone requesting the reconsideration of a book’s inclusion in a library must have a “vested interest” in that public or school library, the act stipulates. This would include someone who is a resident of the same municipality as the public library or a current teacher, parent or student in the relevant school district.
Steven Brown, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, testified in support of the bill at the hearing. “This bill contains a number of important provisions that give significant protection to librarians” who may face “potential obscenity charges merely for doing their job,” he wrote in an email to The Herald.
In written testimony submitted to the Senate Education Committee and shared with The Herald, the ACLU R.I. noted that many of the books that have been targeted by bans contain “racial and LGBTQ+-affirming themes.”
“While we fully respect the rights of parents to have a say in the books that their own elementary school children take out of the school library, they should not be able to dictate what every other student can read,” the statement reads.
The bill, Steven Brown wrote to The Herald, is “an important step in protecting the freedom to read in school and public libraries at a time when they are under siege by coordinated campaigns.”
“A democratic society cannot function properly without a robust defense of freedom of speech and the freedom to read,” he added.
But the bill faced a fair degree of opposition in the hearing.
“I’m in opposition to any bill that aims to silence parents from participating in their children’s education,” Ramona Bessinger, a Rhode Island resident and a teacher at Classical High School who testified against the bill, wrote in an email to The Herald. “Parents across the nation are unhappy with the partisan politics and age-inappropriate comprehensive sex education in K-12 schools.”
“While at school or in taxpayer funded libraries, all reading material should reflect accuracy and literary merit,” Bessinger added. “Woke politics is partisan and should not be taxpayer-funded and certainly has no place in public education.”
McKenney said that librarians are professionals who curate their collections carefully and attempt to ensure that items on their shelves are appropriate for the community.
“No one is forced to go into a library,” McKenney added. “If I don’t like a book that’s sitting in my local library, I can stay home.”
At the March 12 hearing, author Padma Venkatraman alleged that her most recent book, titled “Safe Harbor,” has experienced “soft censorship” — when access to a book is deliberately limited by community members without a formal ban.
“Safe Harbor” follows a young girl as she adjusts to life in R.I. after immigrating from India. At the hearing, Venkatraman read a message from school administrators who expressed their love for her novel but said some within the school were “too scared to feature a book that showed Brown immigrants as heroes.”
Venkatraman said her books are important for students who may not have access to stories about characters that share their backgrounds.
“Passage of this bill will send a strong message that Rhode Island remains a haven for intellectual freedom,” the ACLU R.I. wrote in their testimony.
The bill was held at the end of the hearing to allow for more time to review written testimony. An additional hearing for the bill has yet to be scheduled.
