ATLANTA – Legislation to strip librarians of their criminal immunity from a law that makes it illegal to give “harmful” books and other content to minors is moving quickly through the Georgia General Assembly, after passing a House committee in a partisan vote Friday.
Conservatives and religious advocates have been pushing for years to revoke the librarian exemption from a 1980s obscenity law that makes it a crime to knowingly give a minor a visual, written or recorded work depicting sex or sexuality in a way that offends the “prevailing standards” of a community.
The Senate legislation that passed one of the state House’s judiciary committees Friday would subject librarians in public libraries, schools and colleges to prosecution for violating that law.
Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania, discussing Senate Bill 74 at the Georgia Capitol on Friday, Feb. 6, 2026. His legislation would expose librarians to jail for violating a decades-old law against giving “harmful” books and other such material to minors. (Ashtin Barker/Capitol Beat)
Previously, Senate Bill 74 sought to remove the librarian shield entirely. But amendments added Friday would only take it from librarians who fail to comply with their library or school board decisions concerning complaints about books and other materials.
“If the librarian follows what the governing board says, then that’s it, the end,” said Rep. Soo Hong, R-Lawrenceville, who based her amendment off wording suggested by a West Georgia library director at a previous hearing.
The bill passed 6-5 along party lines, with Democrats opposed.
Critics have long contended that the move to strip librarians of their legal protection is part of a strategy to scrub libraries of books about sexuality and gender orientation. SB 74 relies on a section of state law that includes sexual conduct as content considered to be harmful to minors. The law’s definition of sexual conduct includes “acts of masturbation, homosexuality, sexual intercourse … .”
Rep. Shea Roberts, D-Atlanta, argued that SB 74, in conjunction with that existing definition, would lead to the banning of books “where two boys are holding hands.”
Rep. Rob Leverett, R-Elberton, disagreed with her interpretation. “It’s talking about sexual contact, contact involving, you know, our privates,” he said.
Leverett also disagreed with Rep. Esther Panitch, D-Sandy Springs, who predicted that the bill, should it become law, would effectively become a book “ban” by encouraging extreme caution among library boards.
They would become “censorship boards,” she said.
“When the choice is between keeping a challenged book on the shelf or exposing your libraries to prosecution, the book will lose every time,” Panitch said, adding that one arrest and mugshot of a librarian who defended a controversial book would cause every library in the state to remove it.
Giving harmful material to a minor is a misdemeanor of “a high and aggravated nature,” punishable by up to 12 months in jail and a fine of up to $5,000.
Leverett said the legislation was not a ban because it would only require moving certain books to age-restricted parts of libraries.
“That’s a great difference,” he said. “I would agree with you if we were talking about burning them or taking them out of the library altogether.”
At a prior hearing this week, a member of the public commented against the measure by observing that a book for children had been attacked because it named male and female genitalia.
A Republican lawmaker shot back: “is it the librarian’s responsibility to teach my children what a vagina and a penis is?” The lawmaker, Rep. Charlice Byrd, R-Woodstock, said a parent should decide when to expose their child to such information.
The next stop for SB 74 will be the House Rules committee, which gets to decide whether to put the measure to a vote by the full House. The bill has already passed the Senate, in a party-line vote last year, the first year of this biennial session.
Should the House pass it with the new amendments, the Senate would need to agree to the changes before it would move to the governor’s desk.
The main sponsor of the legislation, Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania, told the House committee members Friday that he supported their changes.
ATLANTA — The state House completed its proposed adjustments to the current year budget, sending the Senate its changes to Gov. Brian Kemp’s spending plan for the state through June.
The $42.3 billion amended fiscal year budget approved overwhelmingly Thursday left the governor’s plan mostly intact, but there were a few significant changes.
The House trimmed $80 million from Kemp’s $1.8 billion project to add express lanes to I-75 south of Atlanta. The lawmakers also cut $25 million from the governor’s $325 million proposal to establish a college scholarship fund for students from low-income households.
The House instead put money into myriad projects, including prison cells, mental health facilities, rural infrastructure and medical education.
One major switch saved a bit of money. Kemp wanted to return $1 billion to taxpayers in the form of one-time income tax rebates averaging $250 per filer ($500 for married couples).
The House wants to return $150 million less, and to different people. The proposal passed by a 167-5 vote would return $850 million to homeowners through property tax relief grants.
“This grant will reduce next year’s tax bills for homeowners, and we will continue to eliminate property taxes on your home,” said Rep. Matt Hatchett, R-Dublin, chairman of the House Appropriations committee.
Property tax relief is a priority for House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington. He has said he wants to gradually reduce homeowner property taxes until 2032 when they would be abolished.
The Senate, meanwhile, wants to reduce and then eliminate the state income tax.
The House added several big-ticket items. It wants to spend $220 million to design and build a new private prison for low-risk inmates, which would free up 480 beds in state prisons.
The House proposal also adds nearly $30 million to retrofit a building at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro for a new optometry college. And it puts $27 million towards a new hospital in Atlanta to create bed space for mental health and forensic patients and adds $50 million for rural infrastructure projects. It also puts nearly $83 million toward a deficit in the Division of Family and Children Services, with $1.6 million to restore four foster care support contracts that had been cut to save money.
The Senate will now have a chance to make its own amendments to the mid-year budget as the House turns to the full budget for fiscal year 2027, which will fund government starting in July.
ATLANTA — Millions of dollars of out-of-state campaign money flowing into Georgia could soon be more strongly policed in the wake of mysterious political TV ads and big spending on recent elections.
A bipartisan state Senate voted 50-1 to pass a bill Thursday that allows the Georgia Ethics Commission to seek subpoenas against groups or individuals located in other states who are suspected of breaking Georgia campaign finance laws, such as contribution limits or transparency requirements.
“We will now have the tools to hold people outside our state accountable,” said state Sen. Brian Strickland, R-McDonough, before the vote in the state Senate. “This bill is just making certain that those from outside our state that are coming in and pouring money into elections play by the same rules.”
The bill received a vote following a barrage of TV ads and billboards by a shadowy Delaware-based group called Georgians for Integrity, which has launched attacks on Republican gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Burt Jones without disclosing its backers or registering in Georgia.
Democratic candidates have often received more outside money than Republicans in recent high-profile elections.
For example, during the 2022 race for governor, about 78% of Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams’ donations came from outside Georgia, according to a Capitol Beat review of campaign contribution records that included an address through October 2022. By comparison, just 15% of Republican Brian Kemp’s campaign money came from elsewhere.
State Sen. Randal Mangham, D-Stone Mountain, said he worried the Ethics Commission could weaponize its investigatory powers for political purposes.
“I am a little concerned that this not be used as a political pawn to publicize if you’re investigating someone because you don’t like their political views,” said Mangham, who voted in favor of the bill.
Ethics Commission Executive Director David Emadi told a Senate committee earlier this week that groups and individuals who are influencing Georgia elections should be required to comply with state campaign finance laws.
“We’d like to be able to take immediate action if we see these outside actors, outside the state, sending money in unregulated, unreported, attack ads,” Emadi said.
Under House Bill 414, the Ethics Commission would have the authority to ask a Georgia superior court judge to issue a subpoena for documentation or information from outside of the state. Failure to respond to the subpoena within 30 days would result in a default judgment against the out-of-state individual or group.
The bill passed the state House last year, but the state Senate made minor changes to it. The bill now returns to the House for a final vote.
ATLANTA — Legislation that seeks to expose librarians to criminal prosecution for loaning the wrong books to children has resurfaced at the Georgia Legislature.
Senate Bill 74 passed the Senate last year, the first half of the biennial legislative session, and now it is advancing through the House.
The senator sponsoring the bill said library books have become a controversial topic in the area he represents, which is between Augusta and Savannah.
Constituents complained, so he investigated and decided that it was wrong to exempt librarians from the law.
“The objective is simple: protect children from harm,” said Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania. He said he knows his legislation is controversial, given the volume of comment on both sides of the issue before it passed the Senate last year. More than a couple dozen spoke again both for and against the measure during public comment about it this week.
“I have a hard time understanding why people oppose protecting children,” he said.
Georgia law makes it a crime to knowingly give minors any material for reading, listening or watching that is deemed to be “harmful” to them in a sexual way.
Librarians are exempted from prosecution for the crime, which is categorized as a “high and aggravated” misdemeanor. Punishment can include up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine. One library director testified that such a reputational stain would also cost a librarian his or her license to work.
Burns’ bill advanced after a close partisan vote from a House subcommittee Tuesday and is set for a hearing by a full House committee Thursday. It could soon get a vote on the House floor.
Burns has tweaked his bill since last year, leaving librarians shielded when they can demonstrate that they tried to have questionable material submitted for review.
Proponents of the measure say they want “pornography” to be inaccessible to children.
“Kids are being exposed to pornography at such an early age,” said Mike Griffin, lobbyist for the Georgia Baptist Mission Board. This drives them to commit sexual abuse against peers, he testified Tuesday. “It’s so very important that we deal with limiting this type of access because it’s creating perpetrators.”
Other faith-based advocacy groups back the bill, too.
Lucia Frazier, who described herself as a “simple mom,” said children were being exposed to what she saw as “immoral” books in schools.
“I don’t think the curriculum should even have anatomy,” she said. “There is a level of conservatism that we need to go back towards. I think we’re way out of line.”
One critic of the legislation labeled it “authoritarian.” Retired middle school librarian Susan McWethy said those who favor it want to impose their morality on everyone else, with librarians caught in the middle.
Children need access to reliable information about difficult topics such as addiction, gender dysphoria and sexuality, she said, and it is the responsibility of librarians to provide it.
“But somehow I feel these very topics will be under attack by the censorship police,” she said, “placing librarians in impossible situations — whether to follow their professional expertise or capitulate to others who have narrow agendas and want to foist their ideologies on everyone else.”
The legislation maintains the shield from prosecution when librarians are “not aware” that harmful material was available in their library.
But Mike Cooper, a trustee of the DeKalb County Public Library system, worried that an “overzealous” prosecutor would assert that an accused librarian must have been aware.
How does a librarian defend themselves, he wondered, using the venue — a roomful of lawmakers in the Capitol — to drive his point home.
“Librarians do their best to survey the materials they have,” Cooper said, “but they can’t read every word and every book just as I’m sure you don’t know every word in every piece of legislation approved under the Gold Dome.”
The bill’s supporters said it would be the responsibility of the state to prove an accused librarian was guilty of knowingly distributing harmful material to minors.
But Rep. Esther Panitch, D-Sandy Springs, who voted against the measure, said librarians would have to produce evidence of their ignorance.
She asked Cooper a rhetorical question: “Are you aware of any society where banning books has resulted in anything good?”
This prompted Rep. Rob Leverett, R-Elberton, a member of the same legislative subcommittee, to say that he did not think the legislation said anything about banning books.
“Now admittedly,” he added, “it does require you to undertake a greater qualitative review than I think most librarians are comfortable making.”
ATLANTA — Billionaire Republican health care executive Rick Jackson’s entry into the Georgia governor’s race this week could shake up a contest that has so far been dominated by three statewide GOP officeholders.
Jackson, 71, pitched himself as an outsider and loyalist to President Donald Trump who can challenge Attorney General Chris Carr, Lt. Gov Burt Jones and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for Georgia’s top job.
“I don’t need this job for money or power. It’s not about me,” Jackson said in his introductory campaign video. “No more free rides for people who refuse to work. If you want to sit on your butt, binge watch Netflix and scarf down Cheetos, do it with your own money.”
Rick Jackson is a Republican contender for Georgia governor in 2026 (Photo credit: rickjackson.com)
Jackson, the founder of Jackson Healthcare, says he plans to spend tens of millions of dollars of his own money on his candidacy, ensuring he can make himself more of a household name before this May’s Republican primary.
His run for office could split the field and increase the likelihood of a runoff, which would be held in June if none of the candidates wins a majority in May.
If elected, Jackson said he would prioritize deportations, cutting taxes, and banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
The winner of the Republican field will advance to the November election. The Democratic contenders for governor include former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Rev. Olu Brown, former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, former state Sen. Jason Esteves, state Rep. Derrick Jackson, state Rep. Ruwa Romman, and former DeKalb County CEO Mike Thurmond.
