Oregon’s House of Representatives approved a bill this week that would prevent anti-LGBTQ+ book bans in schools, sending it to the state’s out Gov. Tina Kotek (D), who is expected to sign it into law.

As the Oregon Capital Chronical reports, Senate Bill 1098 would prevent school and classroom libraries in the state from banning books or other materials solely based on the fact that they “include a perspective, study or story of, or are created by, any individual or group against whom discrimination is prohibited under” the state’s anti-discrimination in education law. That includes books by and about LGBTQ+ people, women, and people of color.

Related

Most book ban requests are coming from organizations & officials. They’re targeting LGBTQ+ authors.
Individual parents are not behind efforts to ban books. This is not a grassroots effort.

The bill does still allow for the removal of books from schools, but lays out specific guidelines for the process. Parents or guardians of students at a school must make a formal written request challenging a book, and a committee from the school or district must ensure that the challenge was not made based on the book’s depiction of or authorship by members of a protected class under Oregon’s anti-discrimination in education law. That committee must also provide a public written explanation before any book is removed from a school library.

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S.B. 1098 also covers school textbooks, which are required to “adequately address the roles in and contributions to the economic, political and social development of Oregon and the United States by” men and women of color, people with disabilities, immigrants and refugees, LGBTQ+ people, and other protected classes.

The bill, which was approved by the state Senate in March, passed the Oregon House of Representatives Monday in a 34-21 vote. State Rep. Cyrus Javadi, the only Republican to vote in favor of the bill, took the floor to speak about how reading helped her own gay son understand his identity.

“You can remove a book if the content is too graphic,” Javadi said, according to the Capital Chronicle. “You can remove it if it’s not age-appropriate, but you can’t remove it just because the author is gay or Muslim or Black or because the story centers someone that makes you uncomfortable.”

“Let’s not teach our kids that their stories are too controversial to belong on the shelf,” Javadi added.

Oregon is the latest state to pass a law aimed at stemming the tide of book bans, largely targeting titles by and about LGBTQ+ people and people of color that has swept the nation in recent years. While Republican lawmakers in states like Idaho, Missouri, Tennessee, and Arkansas have passed laws aimed at banning books, Colorado, California, Illinois, New Jersey, Vermont, Minnesota, Maryland, and Washington have all passed legislation similar to Oregon’s.  

According to the Capital Chronicle, the state saw 151 books challenged last year, more than any year since the Oregon State Library started tracking challenges in 1987.

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