BALTIMORE – A new school year means new changes. For some Maryland librarians, heading back to school means new protections .
“So, we cannot be fired, cannot be fined, cannot have criminal charges pressed against us or any of those types of punitive damages that we’ve seen happen across the country,” Maryland Library Association President Teonja Jung said.
That’s because Maryland’s Freedom to Read Act protects librarians from retaliation that is often spurred by book ban controversies.
“We didn’t have that last year,” Jung said. “And it made it very difficult to navigate a lot of these challenges and bans. But this year going in, we know we cannot be penalized for being librarians.”
The new law sets standards for public and school libraries where books cannot be removed because of an “author’s background or for partisan, ideological or religious disapproval.”