CHICAGO — Illinois lawmakers greenlighted a bill Wednesday that said libraries in the state must adopt an anti-book ban policy to receive state funding, in a vote that fell along party lines.
This move was spearheaded by Secretary of State Alexi Giannouliasrepresents a movement counter to the growing effort to book limit about topics such as race, gender, and sexuality in schools and libraries across the United States.
The bill has passed through both chambers and is now making its way to the desk of Governor JB Pritzker, who has said he looks forward to signing it.
“This important law is a victory for our democracy, a victory for First Amendment rights, and most importantly, a great victory for future generations,” Giannoulias said in a press conference Wednesday after BD 2789 cleared the Senate in a party line vote.
To qualify for state funding, the bill required libraries to adopt the American Library Association Library Bill of Rightsstating that “the material may not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those who contributed to its creation,” and “may not be banned or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disagreement.”
Libraries can also develop alternative policies that prohibit the practice of prohibiting acceptance of funds.
Chicago area senator Laura Murphy, a Democrat and one of the bill's sponsors, celebrated its passage.
“Our nation's libraries have been under attack for far too long — they are bastions of knowledge and enhance the spread of ideas,” Murphy said in a news release. “Librarians are trained professionals, and we need to trust that they will fill our libraries with the right materials — they are hired for what they do, and they deserve our respect.”
All 19 Republicans in the Illinois Senate voted against the measure, including Republican Sen. Jason Plummer, who represents Edwardsville, a city northeast of St. Louis.
Plummer said the bill was an attempt by Illinois Democrats “to impose their extreme ideology on communities across this state” and would wrest control of local libraries.
“Locally elected library board members, working to increase literacy in their communities, do not need a book-ban agenda concocted by Chicago politicians just trying to get cheap publicity,” Plummer said in a news release.
“It offends the ideal of good government to threaten to take public funds away from the communities that generate those funds through their taxes,” he said.
Giannoulias, a Democrat, said he was “blown away that this has become a partisan issue.”
Efforts to ban and limit books in schools and public libraries reach a record high in 2022according to a March report from the American Library Association.
Giannoulias, who in January was sworn in as the first new secretary of state in a quarter century, is working closely with Naperville Democratic Rep. Anne Stava-Murray after parents in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove complained to the high school board about “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe last summer.