At the beginning of the 2025 legislative session, it appeared that a bill to criminalize librarians who shelve controversial content had considerable momentum.
Nearly every Republican in the House co-sponsored the bill—practically a majority of the voting body had the bill, House Bill 4, reached the floor for a vote. Sponsors included House leadership.
HB4 never made it to the House floor, however, and in fact never even made it onto an agenda for the House Judiciary Committee for which it was assigned.
“Our devoted and beleaguered librarians will not have to worry about being handcuffed and jailed for refusing to censor books under House Bill 4, the ‘Jail the Librarians bill,’ which never made it out of its House Committee,” Read Freely leadership said in a statement Friday. “Furthermore, the bill, which would have politicized our library boards even more (SB 6), once again died before making it to the Senate floor.
“We are thankful that more reasonable heads prevailed against hatred and fear in the legislature, and for the Alabama lawmakers who resisted this unconstitutional censorship and extremism. We send our gratitude, our appreciation, and our support to those lawmakers who heard the reasonable majority and decided against government overreach into our personal reading choices.”
Although legislation went nowhere, the focus of the library wars has shifted primarily to the Alabama Public Library Service, which now boasts a majority of members who have either publicly supported or expressed sympathy for the agenda of groups, including Moms for Liberty and Clean Up Alabama, calling for censorship of certain materials.
“And even … as this session closes, opposing forces are already crafting legislation for a chosen representative to prefile, and are regrouping to continue their assault on our freedoms and beloved public institutions at the next legislative session,” Read Freely leaders said in the statement. “But we have seen over and over again that the majority of Alabamians are with us, and we will not let our home, a state whose motto is ‘We dare defend our rights,’ be taken over by those who stir up fear and hate in order to convince citizens to hand over their rights and their freedoms. We will not allow the rights of marginalized communities to be trampled at the demands of hate groups. And we will not stand by as librarians are terrorized.”
