By Ryan Carpenter

A bill to require the cataloging of visual depictions of graphic sexual content available in school libraries passed the Virginia House, but did not pass the Senate.

Del. Timothy Anderson, R-Virginia Beach, introduced House Bill 1379, which would have required Virginia K-12 school principals, or a designated person, to start and maintain the school library catalog. The database would have been accessible for parents to view available content and opt their children out if they wanted.

There has been an “unprecedented surge in local and statewide book challenges” in recent years, according to the American Library Association.

EveryLibrary is a political action committee that advocates for libraries. The organization’s bill tracker identifies a total of 79 bills in statehouses across the country that would add a new layer of scrutiny to school libraries and administrators.

Similar parental advisory bills were introduced in the Virginia General Assembly but did not advance. Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, introduced Senate Bill 1463 to require public libraries, including K-12 libraries, to label sexually explicit materials.

 On the other side of the aisle, Del. Karrie Delaney, D-Fairfax, introduced HB 2136. The bill would have protected public school library materials from removal or restriction based on protected characteristics including race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and more.

Anderson’s proposed measure would have allowed the principal to determine how books were labeled and cataloged. Parents would have the option to restrict their child’s access to the catalog content, and also to request the school review catalog content if they felt it had not been flagged correctly.

“I could opt my child out from having access to those books,” Anderson said. “[I] wasn’t trying to take the books out of the libraries, wasn’t trying to censor them. I was just trying to empower parents to make the best decision for their child.”

His district is dealing with “at least 100 books” he would want cataloged as sexually graphic material, Anderson said.

“We didn’t go after, like, romantic novels,” Anderson said, as he detailed graphic book imagery.

Anderson mentioned six examples of graphic novels during the bill’s second House reading, that he said contain content not suitable for young adults.

One was “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” one of the most-banned books in America, according to an NBC report. The book was first pulled for review from Fairfax County Public Schools in September 2021, according to the same report. The book currently remains in Fairfax High School, according to Anderson. He also mentioned “The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel,” which includes depictions of the rape of young women.

The bill was not an attack on LGBTQ content, according to Anderson, but “graphic sexual content that is deemed harmful to minors.”

“A drawing of two boys holding hands is not sexually graphic, but a drawing of two children engaged in oral sex is, regardless of the theme of that oral sex,” Anderson said.

The bill allowed flagged material to remain in the library catalog, Anderson said. Librarians who accidentally missed a book in “good faith” would not be penalized, he said to House members, although the bill did not explicitly state that.

Parents in Virginia and across the country have voiced their support for this type of involvement, according to Anderson.

“Parents are screaming at their local school boards about this,” Anderson said.

The bill was supported by the Family Foundation and the Pro-Family Women organization, according to the Senate Education and Health committee. The bill faced backlash from the Virginia Education Association, Virginia Library Association, and some school teachers and librarians.

Lia Fisher-Janosz is the librarian at Sharon Elementary School in Alleghany County. She testified to a Senate panel against Anderson’s bill.

 The bill is a product of a political climate where “one person or group” believes they have the right to make choices for all and upend the rights of others, according to Fisher-Janosz.

Librarians should not have to keep tabs on what books each individual child is allowed to check out, Fisher-Janosz stated in an email interview.

“This is a violation of children’s civil rights, which are inalienable and not that different from those possessed by adults,” Fisher-Janosz stated.

Barbara Haas is the librarian at Thomas C. Boushall Middle School in Richmond. She is worried about the logistical consequences of such a bill.

“The difficult part for me if something like that passed would be, you know, having to consult a spreadsheet every time a child wanted to check out a book,” Haas said.

She doesn’t know what the system would look like in practice.

“I’ve never had a parent, you know, specifically say to me they don’t want their child to … read a particular thing,” Haas said.

Haas also is unsure who or what would determine what is sexually explicit content. She pointed out that “what is sexually explicit to one person is not to another.”

“If you don’t want your kid to read it, then that’s a conversation that you need to have with your kid,” Haas said. “I just don’t see how a spreadsheet is going to be helpful.”

The bill died on a 9-6 vote in the Senate Education and Health committee. The move killed the bill, but is not the end of the issue.

“Parents are angry,” Anderson said. “This is really one of the reasons why Glenn Youngkin is the governor and the Republicans have the House.”

Capital News Service is a program of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Robertson School of Media and Culture. Students in the program provide state government coverage for a variety of media outlets in Virginia.

By Jackson Rebraca

Lawmakers voted down two bills that aimed to provide child support payments for any child whose parent or guardian was killed by a drunk driver.

Del. Jeffrey Campbell, R-Smyth, introduced House Bill 1549 and Sen. Bill DeSteph, R-Virginia Beach, introduced Senate Bill 1288.

Similar legislation has been introduced in other states as Bentley’s Law. Bentley’s Law is named for Bentley Williams, whose parents and infant brother were killed by a drunk driver in Missouri in April 2021. William’s grandmother Cecilia Williams then led the charge, reportedlyworking with local legislators to draft legislation to take to the Missouri General Assembly.

Bentley’s Law failed to pass the Missouri legislature in 2022. The same legislation has been put forth in 24 other states, including Virginia, according to KSDK.

The Virginia Senate bill failed unanimously in the Senate Committee on the Judiciary by a 14-0 count. The House measure passed through the House of Delegates with bipartisan support, on a 66-32 vote. The House bill hit a dead end in the same Senate committee, but on a 10-5 vote to pass by indefinitely.

Drunk driving was responsible for 247 deaths in 2021, according to the Virginia DMV.

Drunk driving is a “plague upon the state,” Campbell told a House subcommittee panel during the bill’s hearing.

Frank Harris, director of state government affairs for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, testified in favor of the bill. MADD has supported Bentley’s Law since it was first introduced in Missouri.

“This will make individuals think twice before getting behind the wheel and driving impaired, and it’s also about justice for victims,” Harris said to the House subcommittee.

Richard Garriott from the Virginia Family Law Coalition spoke against the bill, saying that it would change “the dynamic of child support in Virginia.” The law coalition did not support it last year, either, Garriott said.

Child support rulings are not static and often require “almost annual litigation,” said Daniel Gray, head of the Virginia Family Law Coalition.

“You’re really creating a way of having people that would normally have this dealt with one time in the context of a wrongful death action consign to multiple years of litigation,” Gray said about the bills.

Virginia has a wrongful death statute that allows parties to sue for loss of income, care and sorrow, among other claims, Gray said.

“There’s already a very expansive wrongful death statute that people can take advantage of and get relief of the type that this bill is trying to introduce,” Gray said.

However, not everyone can afford the cost of a lawsuit, Campbell said to the subcommittee panel.

“In many cases the offending party simply doesn’t have assets and there’s not adequate insurance coverage,” Campbell said. “We end up with children left, in many cases, as wards of the state and the taxpayers are asked to pick up the burden.”

Some Senate members with a litigation background spoke against DeSteph’s bill in committee.

Sen. Joe Morrissey, D-Richmond, agreed with the Senate bill “in spirit” but that the bill felt like “a solution looking for a problem,” he said.

Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, questioned why the law would apply only to deaths from drunk driving and not other crimes, or whether the law would apply when a parent is permanently disabled but not killed.

“It’s not clear to me why this is a policy solution to a specific problem,” Surovell said.

No comment or public testimony was given for the House bill hearing in the Senate.

Roderick Howard, MADD’s mid-Atlantic region executive director, expressed disappointment over the bills’ failure but stated that MADD will continue to support Bentley’s Law as long as it is introduced in any state legislature.

Tennessee is the only state where the legislation has passed. It was renamed Ethan, Hailey and Bentley’s Law to include the names of the children of Nicholas Galinger, a Tennessee police officer who was hit and killed by a drunk driver, according to MADD.

The legislation may have a chance in future years, DeSteph said.

“I think it’s a great idea, and sometimes it takes two or three years to get a great idea through,” he said.

By Chloe Hawkins

Lawmakers did not pass bills introducing penalties for improperly storing a firearm, but did agree to incentivize firearm safety through a tax credit.

Lawmakers last week passed a measure introduced by Del. Alfonso Lopez, D-Arlington. The House bill, which had bipartisan support in both chambers, will create a tax credit for purchasing a firearm safety device, such as a gun safe or locker.

Anyone who purchases a gun safe, or similar device that can be used to store a firearm by means of a key or combination, will be eligible for a tax credit, according to the bill. Taxable years for this credit are between Jan. 1 and Jan. 1, 2028.

The purchaser of a gun safe will receive no more than one tax credit a year for up to $300 of the purchase price of one or more firearm safety devices, according to the bill. Lawmakers agreed to cap the pool of available credits allowed at $5 million annually, on a first-come, first-served basis. Taxpayers are required to submit receipts for the purchases.

Democratic lawmakers think more is needed to curb gun violence, and introduced several gun control measures that were not passed this session.

The number of gun-related deaths among Virginia minors from 2017-2022 is about 500, according to statistics shared by Kathrin Hobron, chief medical examiner for the Virginia Department of Health. The number of cases for 2022 is around 90, but are still being counted and are subject to change, Hobron stated.

Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax, introduced Senate Bill 1139. The bill required that a firearm owner who lives with a minor, or someone prohibited from using firearms, to safely store their personal firearms. It also required gun stores to post notice of the law and penalty for violation.

Boysko introduced the bill due to the increase in gun violence, she said.

“Children are killed by gunfire more than any other reason in the U.S. and in Virginia,” Boysko said. “I think it’s time that we do something about it.”

Over 100 incidents involving a firearm were reported throughout Virginia schools in the previous school year, according to student behavior and administrative response data collected by the state Department of Education.

A 6 year old shot their teacher at a Newport News elementary school in January. The family released a statement which read, in part, “the firearm our son accessed was secured.”

Two days before Boysko’s bill died in a House subcommittee, a loaded gun was found at Lloyd C. Bird High School, located in Chesterfield County. This is at least the third gun incident reported at the high school this school year, with a gun found in October and a loaded magazine found in September, according to local news reports.

Senate lawmakers amended Boysko’s bill to reduce the penalty charges. The original penalty was a Class 1 misdemeanor charge, which is equal to 12 months in jail, a fine of up to $2,500, or both, according to Boysko. The penalty was reduced to a Class 4 misdemeanor, which is a fine of up to $250.

“We don’t want to send people to prison,” Boysko said of the reduced penalty. “We want to help them change behavior so that they’re behaving responsibly with their firearms.”

The Senate passed the bill on a 22-16 vote, with two Republican votes of support. Boysko was “thrilled” to see the bill pass.

“It was nice to see that we got a little bit of bipartisan support,” Boysko said.

The thrill was short-lived. The bill was assigned to the House Public Safety subcommittee, where it died the next day — without a chance for Boysko to present the bill to the panel.

Some concerns with the bill in the Senate centered around hunting.

“There are those of us who live in rural Virginia, and we are raised up with hunting guns,” said Sen. Richard Stuart, R-King George, ahead of a vote on the bill. “And they are not assault weapons.”

The bill needed “a lot more work” to reach its true intentions, Stuart said.

Del. Marcus Simon, D-Fairfax, introduced a similar firearm storage bill in the House that never made it out of subcommittee.

Philip Van Cleave is the president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, an organization that lobbies for gun rights. Van Cleave opposed the bill and said it was a “one-size-fits-all” bill.

“There are some families, probably quite a few, especially in rural parts of the state, where a person in their teens has grown up around guns,” Van Cleave said. “Their parents have taught them how to safely handle guns, how to shoot them and everything else.”

Firearm owners don’t deserve to be punished because of a few irresponsible parents, according to Van Cleave.

Almost 50 firearm-related bills — gun control measures and efforts to roll back gun control measures — were introduced this session, but few are anticipated to complete the path through both chambers, which are currently controlled by opposing parties.

“It’s never been this bad,” Van Cleave said about the partisan divide around firearm legislation.

Stephen Farnsworth is the director of the University of Mary Washington Center for Leadership and Media Studies and a political science professor. Firearms need to be secured effectively, especially in places where kids are present, Farnsworth said.

“What we learned in the wake of what happened at that Hampton Roads elementary school is that standards to keep guns from children could stand to be improved,” Farnsworth said.

Republicans who represent rural areas are attempting to be competitive with their messaging to capture votes in the looming primary races, according to Farnsworth.

 A significant number of Republicans actually favor gun safes and trigger locks, but folks who vote in primaries are “much more extreme,” he said.

“They are much more likely to be single-issue voters on things like guns and abortion,” Farnsworth said.

 Lawmakers will continue to reach a deadlock on gun control laws until the two parties can come to a mutual agreement, Farnsworth said.

“What you can expect with gun control and the legislature is what you can expect would be the fate for just about every hot-button issue in the Commonwealth right now — divided government equals stalemate,” Farnsworth said.