[Baltimore Sun] New Maryland law to prevent book banning signed by Gov. Wes Moore
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New Maryland laws aimed at limiting book bans, expanding affordable housing opportunities and preventing burdensome local rules on where cannabis dispensaries can open became official Thursday with Gov. Wes Moore’s signature.
Going into effect immediately was the Freedom to Read Act — a response to a rise in challenges to books in schools and public libraries, including dozens in Carroll County schools, that primarily tell the stories of LGBTQ+ youth or that deal with race. The law sets standards for content in libraries for the first time and makes Maryland one of the few states to enact such legislation for a trend seen nationwide.
“This is huge,” Del. Dana Jones, an Anne Arundel County Democrat who sponsored the bill, said in an interview Thursday. “As a lifelong reader and lover of libraries, I know it was important to me to see myself reflected in literature as a little girl growing up in Maryland. But the sigh of relief as a mother, that I know that anyone can go to a library and see themselves reflected in literature, is honestly an overwhelming feeling of pride to be a Marylander today.”
The law prohibits school and public libraries from excluding material solely because of the author’s origin, background or views, or for partisan, ideological or religious reasons.
Proponents have acknowledged some books could still be successfully challenged, including those removed for containing sexual content. That’s been the stated reason for book removals in Carroll County, where the board of education has also enacted a policy against “sexually explicit” content, which it defines as “unambiguously describing, depicting, showing, or writing about sex or sex acts in a detailed or graphic manner.”
The law also requires each school library system to have a uniform process for challenging material, for the material to remain available during the review and for that process to have a “reasonable timeline.” Those provisions angered Republican opponents who said during legislative debates that challenged material should be removed and a set timeline should be enacted to ensure a speedy review.
Ultimately passed mostly along party lines, the legislation was a top priority for Democratic House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones and part of her 2024 “decency agenda” that was signed into law in its entirety Thursday.
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Jones, of Baltimore County, said the Freedom to Read law is intended to “ensure that we are exposing students to diverse viewpoints in a thoughtful and respectful way” at a time when “anger and hate” have resurfaced in political discourse.
“We’ve seen a rise of hate-based incidents in our classroom as curriculum debates and cultural wars have begun to overwhelm the school systems,” Jones said.
Del. Dana C. Jones, of Anne Arundel County, applauds as Gov. Wes Moore acknowledges the achievements of a number of bills, including hers, Thursday. (Karl Merton Ferron/Staff)
Other pieces of that agenda included new laws intended to limit election misinformation and disinformation, establish an anti-bias training program for school employees and fix what proponents said was a loophole in worker protection laws.
Under the law from Jones and Del. Luke Clippinger, a Baltimore Democrat, employers with fewer than 15 employees are now prohibited from discriminating based on a worker’s sexual orientation.
Moore, a Democrat, signed 288 bills Thursday — more than a quarter of the 1,052 passed by the Democratic-controlled General Assembly during the annual 90-day session that ended earlier this month. In the governor’s ornate reception room at the State House, children were scattered around the floor and on the laps of their parents who brought them to the ceremonial event on “take your child to work day.”
“It’s a great day, and a couple of additional Days here,” Moore said with his Secretary of Housing & Community Development Jake Day’s young daughters on his lap just a few feet from the podium.
Moore’s trio of housing bills — aimed at expanding affordable housing opportunities and protecting renters — were a primary focus of Thursday’s signings after being one of his priorities during the session.
The Housing Expansion and Affordability Act makes several zoning changes to incentivize development. It will allow for development in higher-density areas and prevent local governments from setting “unreasonable” limits on requirements for development — a move some critics saw as a step too far into preempting local control.
The Renters’ Rights and Stabilization Act, meanwhile, will create a new state advocate for renters and increase the burden on landlords who want to evict tenants, among other provisions that Republican detractors claimed were an attack on landlords.
Concerns over both bills, even among some Democrats, led to concessions. Regulations Moore proposed that would have required a certain portion of newly built units to be “affordable” were cut in the zoning bill. And in the second, landlords’ eviction filing fees were increased from $8 to $43, though Moore had proposed $93. That cost can also be pulled from renters’ security deposits under the final version of the law.
The bills were the most contentious of his 16-bill package and passed along party lines, though a few Republicans broke off to vote in support with the rest of the Democratic-supermajority House and Senate.
Moore acknowledged it was a tough conversation even as he boasted of their passage Thursday. He said he remembered talking to Day, the housing secretary, earlier in the year about critics saying, “Don’t touch housing. Housing is complicated. It’s challenging.”
“Having the state play a role in this is always very complicated because so much of this stuff is local,” Moore said.
The final bills — including a third bill to more effectively collect federal funds for housing projects — are intended to increase supply and, in effect, lower prices amid a minimum shortage of 96,000 units statewide, according to Moore’s office. In his speech, Moore called out Baltimore Sheriff Sam Cogen for his support on the issue, including testimony that Moore described as a “game-changer” for its emphasis on his office’s desire to enforce fewer evictions.
Holding a bill-signing pen, Sam Cogen, sheriff of Baltimore City, is acknowledged by Gov. Wes Moore regarding the reduction of the city sheriff’s department’s handling of evictions. (Karl Merton Ferron/Staff)
Another high-profile bill signed into law Thursday is the first major adjustment to Maryland’s nascent recreational cannabis industry, which lawmakers created in early 2023 before legalization started July 1.
After some local governments attempted to restrict where new cannabis businesses could open — such as restricting them to industrial zones or setting larger buffers around residential areas — the new law will prohibit those kinds of efforts. New dispensaries cannot face tougher restrictions than those that exist for alcohol retailers, which are more relaxed, according to the new law. Still, it makes some concessions, like allowing local governments to increase the existing minimum distance between dispensaries from 1,000 feet to about 2,640 feet, a half-mile.
Moore previously signed 120 bills and, after Thursday, has about 640 left to decide whether to sign, veto or let go into law without his signature by a May 28 deadline. He’s facing pressure to veto some bills — namely, high-profile changes to the juvenile justice system that seek to hold young people who commit crimes more accountable.
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