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Legislation to ensure that a 2022 law requiring parental notification of explicit instructional materials in public schools is not used to censor books appears to be heading to Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

The House of Delegates has now passed both its own version and a Senate version of the legislation.

The 2022 law included an enactment clause language that specified that it should not be construed as requiring or providing for the censoring of books in public elementary and secondary schools. But some school boards have citedthe law when banning booksover the past year.

Last fall, a Hanover High School student placed Banned Book Nooks at two locations in the county, this one being at We Think In Ink in Ashland.

Senate Bill 235, sponsored by Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Chesterfield, which passed the House on Monday on a vote of 53-46, would put that language from the enactment clause into the law.

Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Chesterfield, seen here in 2020, sponsored the Senate version of the parental notification bill that cleared the House of Delegates on Monday.

Hashmi's measure previously passed the Senate 22-18 as Sen. David Suetterlein, R-Roanoke County, joined the 21 Democrats in supporting the measure.

With the bill having now cleared both chambers, the similar House Bill 571, sponsored by Del. Karrie Delaney, D-Fairfax,could likely clearthe Senate as well.

The lawmaker who carried the 2022 measure, then-Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, R-Henrico, said last fall that censorship was not the intent of her bill, which gave parents the right to opt their children out of reading sexually explicit content.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin and state Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, R-Henrico, listen to attendees during a Parents Matter town hall meeting at Crestview Elementary School on Aug. 8. Dunnavant, the lawmaker who carried the 2022 parental notification measure, said last fall that censorship was not the intent of her bill, which gave parents the right to opt their children out of reading sexually explicit content.

Dunnavant's bill said each school board had to adopt policies by Jan. 1, 2023, to ensure parental notification about sexually explicit materials and to provide nonexplicit material as an alternative.

Pointing to that enactment clause that said the measure was not to be used to censor books in schools, Dunnavant said anyone who thinks the measure can be used in that way, needs to go read the bill.

Hashmi and Delaney have said that adding that language into the code will help prevent the law Dunnavant sponsored from being used incorrectly.

While Dunnavant stressed that censorship was not the intention of her bill, some school boards subsequently removed books from school libraries. Hanover, Spotsylvania and Madison counties have been hotspots for controversial book removals in Virginia schools.

The Hanover County School Board voted in June to rewrite its policy concerning which books are allowed in school libraries and then immediately moved to remove copies of 19 books. The policy gives the School Board sole discretion and authority to remove any books from school libraries with a majority vote.

In November, the administration of Hanover Public Schools ordered the removal of 75 book titles from school libraries, including The Handmaids Tale and Slaughterhouse Five, asserting they are sexually explicit.

Some parents and Republican lawmakers have urged the General Assembly to oppose Hashmi and Delaneys bills.

Last week, The Family Foundation hosted a group of parents and children at the state Capitol for a news conference to stress support and opposition of various bills relating to parental input in public education.

The organization's president, Victoria Cobb, accused Democrats of putting censorship into code in order to have a chilling effect on parents who oppose explicit reading materials being available to their children. Del. Nick Freitas, R-Culpeper, joined the group to support its statements.

Ahead of the vote on Hashmi's bill in the House, Freitas asked if the bill would prevent parents from having input on some books being removed from school libraries.

"I would hope that we could all agree that there are some materials that, regardless of what an individual parent may want, they have no business being in a public school library," Freitas said.

Delaney assured the room that "every school district in this commonwealth has a pathway" for removing books.

"What this bill does, and simply the only thing that this bill does, is it prohibits the policies that were created for parental notification to be used for the reason why books can be removed from schools," Delaney said.

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Bills clarify that parental notice not meant to censor books - Richmond Times-Dispatch