Age-Restricted Library Cards Aren’t a Solution. They’re a Liability: Book Censorship News, July 28, 2023

As a response to challenges from the public and/or the state, several public libraries across the country have come to compromises with these bodies in terms of access to collection materials for minors. Among the compromises are library cards with age restrictions. In some facilities, all library cards for those under 18 have been made void and every child now needs to reapply for a new card with parental/guardian restriction choices on them. In other facilities, the new cards based on age are being implemented either when old cards expire or when a new card is requested. Age-restriction cards might look like limiting access to materials for those under 8 in one category, those in the 8-12 category, and/or those in the 12-18 category. Every library going this route is doing so a bit differently.

These cards not only go against everything a public library stands for, but they are a tool of censorship. And while it is a means of avoiding problems from the community or the state — so read this knowing most public libraries going this route are not doing so without a lot of thought — these age-restricted cards are opening up the potential for endless lawsuits at public libraries.

Although it is parents/guardians who will determine what card is appropriate for their child, that is where the parental responsibility ends. Now, every decision afterward falls explicitly on the public library. Knowing how litigious right-wingers pushing for such measures are, they, too, are fully aware that their “parental rights” arguments really mean they want to foist the real parental responsibilities off on underpaid, overworked, deeply battered public service workers like librarians (and educators, of course). Demanding a library create separate cards for different age groups and restrict certain materials based on those cards isn’t about parenting. It’s about ensuring you don’t actually have to parent. You get to sign off on a card and let the library handle it from there.

So for the libraries doing this, some questions.

What happens when a circulation worker miscategorizes one of the cards when a young person and their legal guardian signs up for one? This is not out of the realm of possibility in the least, particularly with how cumbersome such changes or modifications can be with an integrated library system (and especially if that system is shared among different libraries who are offering different “levels” of access). One wrong click and suddenly, right-wing mommy’s daughter, who is 16, has checked out Gender Queer, which is a no-no for card holders in the under 18 category. Who gets sued then? Is it the individual who made a mistake? Not likely; they won’t have money. It’ll be the library itself, putting the entire facility and its funding in a chokehold — again, this is precisely what that contingent of folks want to have happen.

No one is naive enough to believe that these cards will restrict what young people look at if they are in the facility. What happens when right-wing Johnny’s son decides to go to the library after school with his under-18 card and reads Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human (A Graphic Novel) in the stacks but never actually borrows it? Two things immediately come to mind: the parent will claim that the library failed to uphold their promises with the age-restricted card and/or they will demand that library workers check cards at the door and monitor where their kids are at all times. This turns library workers into babysitters, police, and censors all at the same time.

None of those things are their job nor their responsibility. (Besides, police should not be in the library anyway, but that’s been well covered already). But it will become their responsibility the moment a minor does the thing a young person does because they’re a young person: break the “rules.”

We’re back to the opportunity for lawsuits, paired with histrionics about how libraries are giving children porn. Their paper terrorism will grow to terrorism via the courts.

A final consideration: what happens when the library’s card restricts access to materials that are essential for the young person who is in school? At Keene Public Library in Nebraska, for example, the new card categories will only allow young people to borrow items that fall within their category. For those between 13 and 18, they will only be able to borrow items in the young adult section or lower. What happens if they need to get a copy of The Great Gatsby for school? Or a Shakespeare play? What about any classic work of literature that isn’t reshelved in the YA section (and thus a liability now because they are not young adult books?).

Worse, these same kids will have no access to the print materials they may need for an evidence-based research paper outside of the material in the young adult section. While YA nonfiction has a lot of great stuff, it’s not going to be enough to offer the robust research needed to complete an assignment.

So now, the same right-wing christofascists who cite false information as fact get exactly what they want: a young generation of people who could not even access facts or research that is peer reviewed and edited and published by reputable outlets. Those kids will have to rely on the internet for their resources or hope to have enough classroom lessons to understand how to navigate library databases and how to differentiate truth from right-wing truth when it comes to the internet. This is all predicated on the belief that minors will even have access to their library’s digital resources. They don’t in states like Mississippi. We’ll also ignore how much truth is locked behind a paywall and how abundantly free the fake stuff is, all of which has helped to even bring us to where we are in this moment of censorship-excited history.

These kinds of restrictions will just turn young people off to the library all together. We’ve already seen how book bans have caused students to stop going to their school library and stopped reading, period. A populous who has lost interest in learning and reading, one who has lost those inherent traits thanks to the actions of their radicalized parents, guardians, aunts, uncles, cousins, and neighbors, is a populous rife for being sucked into those same dangerous mindsets.

That’s precisely what the christofascists want.

We also know that restricted cards aren’t the answer that the book crisis actors want. What they want are restricted cards AND restricted books, ensuring that the library is unable to keep up with the ever-shifting goal posts and they get to keep talking about how their needs are not being met and therefore, why support the library at all?

The answer isn’t in the cards.