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 — 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 — After six lengthy hearings around the state last year, a special legislative committee studying the elections process has recommended incremental changes to Georgia’s voting system.
The study committee chaired by Rep. Tim Fleming, R-Covington, who is running for Georgia secretary of state, recommended Monday that the state use hand-marked paper ballots during the general elections in November.
But there is a twist: the recommendation by the Republican-led panel says QR codes should be allowed to remain on ballots, which critics contend are a security risk because only the counting machines, not voters themselves, can read them.
“The legislation should require all ballots that contain a QR code of any kind to be hand-counted for the purposes of official tabulation,” the committee’s report says. “Scanner tabulation of QR code ballots is for unofficial results only.”
The committee also recommended that the General Assembly add money to the fiscal year 2027 budget to buy a new voting system.
The group also recommended that the legislature allow the committee to continue meeting through the end of this year.
That did not sit well with Kelvin King, another candidate for secretary of state whose wife, Janelle, is a member of the state election board.
The secretary of state oversees elections. The state election board sets election rules and investigates claims of fraud.
King asserted in statement Tuesday that the current voting machines are insecure. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has defended the system’s integrity. Dominion Voting Systems, the company that makes the machines, won hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements with media outlets, including Fox News, over false claims that the machines led to a rigged 2020 election.
ATLANTA — Legislation to ban cellphones in Georgia public high schools is advancing quickly, with a unanimous vote in favor at a first hearing Monday.
The school day ban outlined in House Bill 1009 would take effect in fall 2027, a year after a similar ban for kindergarten through middle school that lawmakers passed last year.
Although the mandatory lower grades ban does not go into effect until next fall, many schools, including some high schools, have voluntary implemented it ahead of schedule.
“The early data shows us that the bill’s been life changing,” Rep. Scott Hilton, R-Peachtree Corners, said in an interview after a subcommittee passed his bill on for review by the House Education Committee. “Test scores are up, social interaction is up and fights are down. So it’s been a huge success, and we look forward to building on that success with nine through 12.”
The voluntary early implementation in some schools has given researchers such as Julie Gazmararian an opportunity to measure the impact.
The professor of epidemiology at Emory University was involved in a survey released last month that found 71% of responding Georgia parents wanted the K-8 cellphone ban extended to high schools.
The 29% of parents who opposed a high school ban were mostly concerned about being disconnected from their child during a school emergency, said the survey by the Rollins School of Public Health.
Other surveys have found similar support from teachers and even students.
Gazmararian testified in favor of HB 1009 Monday, telling lawmakers about consistent positive effects, such as reports of fewer disciplinary referrals.
Early data suggests reduced tardiness, too, she said in an interview after the hearing.
“We’re seeing in the cafeteria (that) kids are talking more to each other,” Gazmararian said. “And teachers feel like, in the classrooms, students are more engaged and less disruptive.”
