Missouri senators seek to bar kids from accessing pornographic materials from libraries

by Annelise Hanshaw, Missouri Independent
March 4, 2025

The Missouri Senate Education Committee discussed legislation Tuesday seeking to ban materials deemed explicit from digital libraries and hold library boards responsible for the content made available to minors.

State Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, an Arnold Republican, filed legislation applying safety measures to “digital library catalogs” after hearing about explicit material available on a state-subsidized application used by public schools.

Her bill adopts the state’s current definition of “pornographic for minors,” which includes “has a tendency to cater or appeal to a prurient interest of minors.”

Sora, an app school districts provide to students through a program run by the Missouri Secretary of State, allows students to check out books digitally. But Coleman said some resources have inappropriate content and link out to explicit material.

“It provides access to a really broad variety of titles, many of which are fantastic, and allows educators to provide books they otherwise couldn’t afford,” Coleman said. “Unfortunately, there are a lot of other materials that are available, including sexually explicit material.”

She contacted both the Secretary of State’s office and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education last year. Both told her it was a problem for school boards to handle.

Since 2003, libraries have been responsible for blocking access to pornographic content on their computers and internet terminals. Coleman’s bill would add digital resources, which can be accessed from home, to the existing statute and create accountability measures.

Schools would have to publish a list of required reading materials on their websites and allow parents access to digital library resources.

Parents would be able to challenge resources as inappropriate, with results of such claims available online. They could sue school personnel, including librarians, for not following the law as a result of “gross negligence” or intentional conduct.

Coleman said school districts should stop using Sora if they cannot thoroughly monitor its catalog.

Mary Catherine Martin, an attorney with conservative law firm Thomas More Society, said she helped draft the legislation to put the onus on schools.

“What we need is an enforcement mechanism that requires school districts to get ahead (of the content) and gives them the obligation of screening things before they hand them to the children,” she said.

State Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican and chair of the education committee, said some content is “definitely not G-rated.”

“To me this is no different than if a school district just left a gun laying somewhere and then wants to act dumb,” he said.

The committee also heard a bill sponsored by state Sen. Nick Schroer, a Republican from Defiance, that would hold library board members accountable for material accessible to children. The bill would add board members to a 2022 law that makes providing explicit sexual material to a minor a class A misdemeanor.

When the law was passed in 2022, some expressed concerns that it would lead to “book banning” and suppression of LGBTQ+ literature.

Schroer said his bill would “protect the innocence and integrity of children’s learning environment.”

The legislation would keep the existing definition of explicit sexual material, which only applies to visual material.

Brattin, who helped draft the bill, said it didn’t include literature because of opposition.

“I think this is just a common sense approach to things,” he said.

The American Library Association included Schroer’s legislation in a list of 98 “adverse” bills. The organization noted a legislative push in recent years to “impair” librarians from providing diverse materials.

These bills come less than two years after a rule by former Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft that requires libraries to create policies preventing minors from accessing obscene materials. Thousands of public comments opposed the rule, calling it censorship.

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