A new Ohio bill seeks to regulate some of the companies that provide online resources for the state’s public schools and libraries. Republican lawmakers leading the bill claim “inappropriate” content has been leaking through.
Ohio House Bill 583 would target the two vendors used for online information databases in a majority of public schools and libraries, called InfOhio and the Ohio Web Library (OWL), establishing “safety policy and technology protection measure requirements” for those companies, for which some funding comes from the state and federal grants.
Under the measure, co-sponsor state Rep. Kevin Ritter, R-Marietta, said the companies would have a three-strike rule, in which they would be notified of offenses coming from advertisements that may come up alongside the online resources, and given the ability to “cure” the resources, removing offending materials.
After the third strike, Ritter said the state would have to consider finding other vendors to provide the materials.
“No doubt, our schools and libraries select educational resources thoughtfully, aiming to provide reliable, age-appropriate content amid tight budgets and heavy demands on their time,” Ritter told a recent hearing of the House Finance Committee.
But he said he and joint sponsor state Rep. Johnathan Newman, R-Troy, have received information that because of the “prevalence of inappropriate content” in the resources, state employees “are having to go back and clean things up.”
The bill would only allow resource providers who prohibit users from “sending, receiving, viewing, or downloading materials or performances that are obscene, harmful to juveniles, depict child sexual exploitation, or encourage or promote the use of illegal drugs, tobacco, alcohol, gambling, or other illegal activities.”
Also included in the requirements of the bill is the demand for companies to filter or block access to “obscene” materials.
Newman gave the committee an example of the material one parent said her child was being exposed to while using one of the resources.
He said a parent from his district told the story of her son calling through their house to ask, “Mom, why is this boy pretending to be a girl, wearing girls’ clothes?”
“Because he knows Mom and Dad don’t approve of that, he knows this is wrong,” Newman said.
Ohio laws define something as “harmful to juveniles” if it “appeals to the prurient interest of juveniles in sex,” and is “patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable for juvenile.”
A material is also considered “harmful to juveniles” if it “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, and scientific value.”
Newman and Ritter said they met with InfOhio leadership before introducing the bill, and were told the company is “working overtime trying to stop these things from getting into the classroom,” but that the response is reactive, instead of proactive, so H.B. 583 would help companies start out on the right foot.
Some members of the House Finance Committee questioned how “obscene” materials would be reported, and how the standard of obscenity in state law would be used in interpreting materials.
“I would be shocked if anyone had problems on this committee if we explicitly denied (removing) illegal drugs, tobacco, pornography, all that stuff,” said state Rep. Bride Rose Sweeney, D-Westlake.
“But when it comes to obscene, and what the definition of obscene is, we’ve had many debates on the floor of the House.”
Sweeney mentioned a different bill that came up in the General Assembly to try to require public libraries to move all potentially “obscene” books, largely those having to do with LGBTQ+ topics, to an area that couldn’t be easily accessed by children.
The measure ended up in the most recent state budget, but was vetoed by Gov. Mike DeWine, who said the language was “not workable.”
State Rep. Jamie Callender, R-Concord, spoke to concerns about unintended consequences from the bill, specifically legitimate research that could be hampered by censorship rules.
“I want to make sure that we as a committee … that we don’t inadvertently do something that would stop someone whose parent was diagnosed with lung cancer from researching impact from smoking, or a young lady who has discovered a lump can not research breast cancer, or symptoms, or signs, or photographs,” Callender said.
He said “overreach” in well-meaning legislation can sometimes be “problematic.”
Bill sponsors argued that the bill isn’t about the obscenity standard, as it doesn’t change anything about the language in Ohio law, but about keeping the companies who run the resource programs accountable to the standards.
Ritter also noted that while the vendors at issue in the bill service a large number of the public schools, no school is required to use those companies if they find other options.
“Some of our wealthier school districts … contract with other vendors,” Ritter said. “This bill would not touch those relationships.”