OKLAHOMA CITY ( KFOR ) — An Oklahoma lawmaker filed a bill on Tuesday that would require public school districts and charter schools to submit a list of available library materials each year to the Oklahoma State Department of Education.
Sen. Warren Hamilton (R-McCurtain) filed Senate Bill 19 on Tuesday. If passed, the bill would require the list of library materials to be submitted to OSDE each year by October 1 and prohibit schools from having inappropriate material accessible to students.
This bill comes after a legal battle last year between OSDE and Edmond Public Schools . The dispute started January 2024 when OSDE sent a letter to Edmond Public Schools, ordering the district to remove two books—”The Kite Runner” and “The Glass Castle”—from its school libraries, after saying the books “qualified as sexualized content.”
The legal battle came to a close in June 2024 when the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the State Department of Education does not have authority to decide what books public schools can have in their libraries.