No vote on removing books from schools as SC education board questions own rule
COLUMBIA — Amid state Board of Education members' misgivings about its own regulation banning 'sexual conduct' from K-12 public schools, the board held off on deciding Tuesday whether to remove 10 more books from school library shelves.
The state board unanimously approved the regulation last year, sending it to the state Legislature. Neither the House nor Senate took a vote on the regulation, which automatically went into effect last June through an apparent fluke that surprised even legislators.
Since the state board's first review in November, board members have agreed to remove 11 books from public school libraries and keep six others, one of which the board required parental permission to check out. Last month, a five-member committee unanimously recommended removing the 10 books up for consideration.
Books considered for removal Tuesday
'Collateral' by Ellen Hopkins
'Empire of Storms' by Sarah J. Maas
'Half of a Yellow Sun' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
'Hopeless' by Colleen Hoover
'Identical' by Ellen Hopkins
'Kingdom of Ash' by Sarah J. Maas
'Last Night at the Telegraph Club' by Malinda Lo
'Living Dead Girl' by Elizabeth Scott
'Lucky' by Alice Sebold
'Tricks' by Ellen Hopkins
Source: Instructional Materials Review Committee
But ahead of taking a vote Tuesday, board members began to question their own regulation, including whether they had applied it correctly in the past. Many of their questions echoed concerns opponents of the complaint have raised.
'I'm not sure if we're shooting at the right target, or if we're shooting whether our range finder is accurate,' said board member David O'Shields, superintendent of Laurens County School District 56.
The first seven books considered didn't come from a parent challenging a local district's ruling but by board members working with state Department of Education staff. Board members wanted to consider some widely questioned books to set a precedent for future rulings and hopefully clear up confusion, members said at the time.
Since then, most of the books removed from school libraries, including the 10 up for consideration Tuesday, came to the state board through challenges from one Beaufort County parent. The same parent brought 96 books to the Beaufort County Board of Education for review last year.
The local school board, which considered all the books before the statewide regulation went into effect, declined to remove any of the books from shelves. The same parent could feasibly ask the state board to consider every one of those books under the regulation, said board member Ken Richardson, former chairman of the Horry Georgetown Technical College board.
'When does this thing stop?' Richardson, who represents Horry and Georgetown counties, asked repeatedly.
10 more books recommended for removal in SC from K-12 libraries
'I think that's the question of the day,' replied board Chairwoman Rita Allison, a former longtime legislator from Spartanburg County.
Board members raised concerns over a single parent being able to bring dozens of requests to the state board, requiring schools across the state to remove them from library shelves, whether or not local community members share the concerns about the books. O'Shields, Allison and Richardson said they had yet to hear complaints about any of the books they had considered in the districts they represented.
'I do not like to come up here every single meeting and vote on books nobody in my area is even talking about,' Richardson said.
Five of the 10 books up for consideration Tuesday are in school libraries in Laurens County School District 56, where O'Shields in superintendent, he said.
Libraries bought those books with the hopes that they would encourage more students to read, while 'understanding that children don't come from a cookie cutter world,' O'Shields said. He questioned whether the board should be considering books as a whole, instead of based on excerpts containing sexual conduct.
In some cases, the sexual conduct that leads the board to remove books from shelves amounts to as little as a few pages in several-hundred-page novels, he said.
'Again, I am not in favor of it,' O'Shields said. 'I personally find those pages repugnant.'
But those books can still be important for some students, he said. O'Shields held up a small, yellow tome entitled 'Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask),' which he deemed his own 'puberty book' — the book to which he turned to learn about the changes happening in his adolescence.
'However, this was all I had. You know what I'm saying?' he continued.
For children who have experienced abuse or other struggles, reading stories similar to their own might be especially important, said Tony Vincent, a minister in Seneca. While he wouldn't be comfortable with his preteen daughters reading some of the books up for review, he also understood that every child is different, he said.
The books 'could possibly save lives and help young people understand themselves and their experiences,' said Vincent, who represents Anderson and Oconee counties.
SC teachers say new 'age-appropriate' rule is causing confusion. They're seeking clear guidance.
'Looking at these books outside of the arc of their full stories is a mistake, in my view,' Vincent said.
The board originally approved the regulation in order to protect children from nefarious people looking to introduce them to sexual ideas with the intention of abusing them, said Richard Harrington, who represents Florence and Marion counties. He acknowledged that he didn't know whether that was actually happening in South Carolina schools, but out of an abundance of caution, the board should continue to remove books that include sexual conduct, he said.
'It would be ill-advised to have these books remain when they could be used for that purpose,' Harrington said.
O'Shields and Vincent asked whether the board could consider a middle ground between removing the books from shelves entirely and allowing any student to access them. The board has already done something similar once, by requiring parental permission to check out 'Crank' by Ellen Hopkins.
'I'm asking for something so it's not, 'goodnight, sweet prince,' for these books,' O'Shields said.
The board voted to postpone a decision on the 10 books up for consideration Tuesday until members can get more clarification on the regulation in hopes of assuaging some of their concerns or determining whether the regulation needs any changes.
The next time the board could take a vote would be at its May 6 meeting.
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If you want someone to blame for the recent crisis caused by President Trump's rush to force a gerrymander of Texas' congressional districts, and the harried responses from governors in California, Illinois and New York, you can start with the Supreme Court. In 2019, in Rucho vs. Common Cause, the group held, 5 to 4, that challenges to partisan gerrymandering present 'a nonjusticiable 'political question'' and thus cannot be heard in federal court. This was widely considered a terrible ruling at the time, and we're just now starting to see the consequences. Gerrymandering occurs when the party that controls a state legislature redraws its districts to maximize smooth elections and safe seats for its party members. The notorious practice isn't new — it's nearly as old as the U.S., having taken its name from Founding Father Elbridge Gerry, an early governor of Massachusetts. Despite finding the practice 'highly disagreeable,' Gerry signed off on the drawing of his state's districts in 1812 to help his party gain competitive seats in the Legislature. During this process, someone apparently remarked that one bizarrely drawn district looked like the salamander — and the name 'gerrymandering' took hold. In the March 26, 1812, edition of the Boston Gazette, the paper ran a cartoon of the district, caricatured by artist Elkanah Tisdale to introduce 'The Gerry-Mander: A new species of Monster.' For most of American history, those engaging in gerrymandering would choose between a handful of maps based on their predictions of which could yield them the greatest advantage. Today, computers can generate thousands of these clever geographical divisions, with leaders ultimately choosing the map that provides them the best chance of partisan success. Intricate algorithms and detailed data about voters allow these map drawers to engage in gerrymandering with surgical precision. Rucho vs. Common Cause arose in North Carolina, which is basically a purple state these days; presidential elections are always close, and statewide votes for congressional seats are evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. However, when Republicans gained control of the North Carolina Legislature in 2010, they crafted a plan to redraw the boundaries for the state's then 13 congressional districts in their favor. State Republicans hired longtime political consultant Thomas Hofeller to generate and evaluate roughly 3,000 distinctive maps, and then selected the one they believed gave Republicans the best chance of earning significant control over North Carolina's House. In the 2018 midterm elections, Republican and Democratic candidates statewide each received roughly half of the votes, but Republicans won 10 of the 13 congressional races. This, of course, isn't unique to North Carolina. In Pennsylvania, across several elections, congressional races in districts drawn by a Republican legislature resulted in Democrats receiving between 45% and 51% of the statewide vote, yet winning just five of its 18 House seats. In Rucho vs. Common Cause, a lower federal court found that partisan gerrymandering violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment (as well as the 1st Amendment and Article 1 of the Constitution). But the Supreme Court, in a 2019 opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., reversed this decision. The 5-4 majority held that federal courts 'cannot entertain a claim' and suggested that the plaintiffs 'must find their resolution elsewhere.' But this was just wrong. Gerrymandering is nothing more than a method for rigging elections. The central precept of a republican government, as the Supreme Court itself once observed, is 'that the voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around.' However, partisan gerrymandering infamously creates a system for representatives to effectively choose their voters. As a result, each voter does not have the same opportunity to influence the outcome of an election, which is antithetical to equal protection. When the court first ruled on partisan gerrymandering, holding that federal courts could hear challenges to it, Justice Lewis Powell observed that 'the boundaries of the voting districts have been distorted deliberately' to deprive voters of 'an equal opportunity to participate in the State's legislative processes.' Some voters will benefit and will have more influence in choosing representatives. For others this will be more difficult as their votes are diluted. That is inconsistent with democracy. Even though districting is usually done at the beginning of each decade, right after the U.S. census, and even though Texas' congressional districts were drawn just a few years ago, Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott are trying to engage in redistricting for the sole goal of manipulating the composition of Congress. Trump, knowing the Supreme Court's decision means that federal courts can't stop it, has strongly urged the state to redraw its districts now to effectively create five more safe seats for Republican representatives. Not surprisingly, states with Democratic governors and legislatures are now looking for ways to respond, including redrawing districts that create Democratic seats in Congress. But some of these states, notably California and New York, already adopted the desirable and seemingly bipartisan approach of having independent commissions draw their districts to eliminate the plague of gerrymandering. The question is whether they can and should also change this practice now to combat what Texas is trying to do. There are many ways to end partisan gerrymandering. Congress could pass a law requiring that all states use independent commissions to draw the congressional districts. The Supreme Court could reconsider and overrule Rucho vs. Common Cause and go back to holding, as the law used to be, that federal courts can invalidate partisan gerrymandering. State courts can find partisan gerrymandering violates state constitutions. But none of this is going to happen now, and there is nothing to stop Texas from its efforts to carve out five more Republican districts. States controlled by Democrats need to respond; unilateral disarmament never makes sense. The loser is American democracy. And the Supreme Court is to blame. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School, is an Opinion Voices contributing writer.
