Latest news with #BethanySoye
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
SD Senate will consider repealing obscenity prosecution protection for librarians
Rep. Bethany Soye, R-Sioux Falls, speaks on the House floor on Jan. 16, 2024. (Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight) The decision to keep or repeal a clause in South Dakota law that protects librarians from criminal penalties for the knowing distribution of 'harmful' material to minors is in the hands of the state Senate. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 5-2 on Thursday at the Capitol in Pierre to endorse a bill that would change the law. Disseminating materials harmful to minors is punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine. Existing law makes being a public librarian an 'affirmative defense' against prosecution. Sioux Falls Republican Rep. Bethany Soye is the prime sponsor of House Bill 1239. It would remove the affirmative defense for librarians for distributing the pornographic content Soye alleges is found on public bookshelves across South Dakota. Schools, universities and museums would also lose the defense. South Dakota House advances bill that lawmaker slams as 'locking up librarians' She pointed to a book series called 'A Court of Thorns and Roses,' and included excerpts from it and other materials available in public libraries in a document she distributed to senators. Soye said books in the series are available in public libraries in Brookings, Madison, Sioux Falls, Rapid City, Vermillion and Yankton, among others. Rapid City Republican Sen. Greg Blanc, a pastor, said he hadn't wanted to 'do his homework' by reading the excerpts, and that doing so made him want to 'go home and take a shower.' 'Most taxpayers don't see the necessity of pornography being available in taxpayer funded institutions,' Blanc said. The bill narrowly cleared the House floor last week after heated debate, during which one opponent decried the proposal as a pathway to 'locking up librarians.' On Thursday, Soye called that rhetoric overblown. Parents have asked librarians to remove books, but Soye said they haven't listened and need an incentive to take community concerns more seriously. Twelve states don't have affirmative defense protections for librarians, Soye said, and librarians haven't been locked up in any of them. 'If it had happened, you'd know about it, because it would have been national news,' she said. Existing state law criminalizes the knowing distribution of obscenity, or possession of obscenity with the intention to distribute it to minors. Soye said librarians would not commit a crime under her bill unless they made an active choice to have obscene material in their collection, keep it on the shelf, and allow kids to check it out. 'No one will accidentally violate this,' Soye said. Opponents weren't so sure. 'The inherent problem with obscenity testing is that you're going to be making subjective calls,' said Cash Anderson, a lobbyist for the South Dakota Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Legislative committee endorses prosecution of librarians who lend books deemed harmful to children Obscene material is generally protected for adults by the First Amendment, but the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that governments can regulate its access by minors. It created a three-part test in the 1973 case of Miller v. California to determine if something is obscene, and therefore legal to regulate. It must appeal to the prurient interest of the average person, depict sexual conduct in a way that is offensive, and lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. Sen. Amber Hulse, R-Hot Springs, said literary value is subjective, and debates about it will likely go to court if Soye's bill passes. Hulse said she'd been inundated with emails on the bill, half for it and half against it. She voted to send the bill to the Senate floor so the full body would have a chance to cast a vote on behalf of their constituents, she said. Sen. David Wheeler, R-Huron, went the other way. He agreed with opponents, who alleged that parents who fail to convince librarians to agree with them on a book's lack of literary virtues are essentially weaponizing the justice system to get their way. Debates on what is or isn't obscene should happen in public, at the local level, Wheeler said. 'We deal with it through the democratic process,' Wheeler said. 'We don't deal with it through criminal prosecution.' Sen. Jim Mehlhaff, R-Pierre, said he'd come to the committee hearing prepared to side with the local government officials in his district who'd urged him to say no. Reading the passages in Soye's handout on books now available in public libraries and testimony from the bill's supporters changed his mind, he said. 'We keep seeing bills like this because libraries are not responsive to parent concerns,' Mehlhaff said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Lawmakers approve sweeping approach to internet porn age verification
State Rep. Bethany Soye, R-Sioux Falls, speaks with lawmakers on the South Dakota House floor during the governor's budget address on Dec. 3, 2024. (Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight) PIERRE — More than a dozen states have passed or are considering laws to require porn sites to ask adults who want to visit them for personal information to prove their age. So far, each of them — including Texas, whose law had an audience with the U.S. Supreme Court last month — have applied the rule to sites on which a third or more of the content counts as pornography. South Dakota could soon be the first state to affix the expectation to any site that hosts any pornography in the 'regular course of the website's trade or business.' Legislative committee endorses prosecution of librarians who lend books deemed harmful to children On Wednesday at the state Capitol, the Senate voted 34-0 to send that bill to the desk of Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden. 'It's a huge step forward,' said Sen. Jim Mehlhaff, R-Pierre, a prime sponsor of House Bill 1053. 'It's time to jump on board and protect our children from pornography on the internet.' No senators spoke against the bill on the Senate floor. The Senate Judiciary Committee spent more than an hour hearing testimony on age verification on Tuesday, however. There was broad agreement in the committee room on the need to address the omnipresence of online pornography. 'It used to be years ago that when we went into schools, we only heard the word 'porn' in schools. Then it became middle school,' said Holly Strand, a Rapid City forensic interviewer in child sex crime investigations. 'About five years ago, we had a kindergartner ask us how to handle pornography. It was all downhill from there.' The Senate panel had two options for age verification on its plate Tuesday. Each aimed to force adult sites to ask visitors for something like a credit card or state-issued driver's license to prove they're old enough to be there. Both required the deletion of that data after the visit. Each would let South Dakota's attorney general levy criminal fines against companies that don't comply. One of them, Senate Bill 18, rejected by the committee, follows the model of Texas by targeting sites where one-third of the content is adult material. SD House approves age verification bill; some Democrats raise censorship concerns HB 1053 draws no such line. The House bill came from Rep. Bethany Soye, R-Sioux Falls. On Tuesday, she said the one-third figure was pulled from thin air by Louisiana lawmakers looking to preempt concerns about an overly broad restriction in their age verification legislation. 'Every state just blindly copied them,' said Soye, who is an attorney. 'And I think that we can do better than that.' To her, the one-third standard amounts to an invitation for porn sites to find ways to keep their total adult content just below the line, perhaps at 29.9% pornography. 'You can already see the loophole,' Soye said. The Texas law, which is similar to Louisiana's, had a hearing in the U.S. Supreme Court last month. The justices won't decide themselves if such laws violate the First Amendment. Instead, the high court is poised to decide how strict lower courts must be as they rule on the constitutionality of age verification laws. Attorney General Marty Jackley told the committee his office would support the state in a lawsuit over either bill. 'I believe this is something that should've been addressed by Congress, but in their absence, you have to act,' Jackley said. He'd prefer to defend the Senate version that mirrors Texas, though. So would Doug Abraham. He's the South Dakota lobbyist for The App Association, which bills itself as a trade group for small tech businesses. He said the lack of a standard for how much content needs to be adult material creates 'overbreadth' concerns. Expecting every app or website with potentially pornographic content to ask for personal information from its users is akin to expecting a mall with a liquor store to make sure every visitor is 21, Abraham said. 'You'd be carding everybody who goes into the mall,' he told the committee. No bill will prevent determined children from accessing pornography, many supporters conceded, but the stricter the rules, the better the chances. 'Even if this prevents one child in our state from earlier exposure to porn, this bill is a success,' said Strand, the forensic examiner. Samantha Chapman of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota voiced concerns about constitutionality. 'All means of age verification that are currently available to us today present substantial risks to anonymous web browsing and internet privacy, which will create a chilling effect on content that is legally available,' Chapman said. South Dakota attorney general tells lawmakers to consider age verification for porn sites There are tools available to parents now, she said. There are other approaches that haven't been tried yet, such as age verification that ties content access to the age of a device's user. Beyond First Amendment concerns with HB 1053's approach, she pointed to worries over the practice of scanning and sharing personal data to access sensitive content. People could intercept the data for use in extortion, she suggested, regardless of a state law's requirement that data be deleted. 'The mere presence of government-issued IDs being scanned and transmitted online, presents risk, the potential for hackers and thieves, and potentially hostile foreign governments to take that data into and to use it,' she said. Chapman testified against both bills, while conceding that SB 18 would be preferable because it would sweep in fewer websites. Sen. David Wheeler, R-Huron, is chair of the Judiciary Committee. He had questions about how broadly HB 1053 would apply, wondering if it could sweep up streaming services like Netflix if the site regularly hosts movies arguably deemed pornographic. After the committee rejected the other bill, he joined other committee members in voting for Soye's bill. 'At this point, since I have no other option, I'm going to support 1053,' Wheeler said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
South Dakota joins 19 states with age-verification law after Senate passes anti-porn bill
PIERRE — South Dakota lawmakers are taking steps to limit access to online pornography by anyone under 18. The state Senate took up House Bill 1053, a bill that would require users to verify they are at least 18 years old to access websites that feature adult content. The bill requires websites considered a "covered platform," or websites which regularly "create, host, or make available material that is harmful to minors," to implement a means of verifying a user's age. These websites would also be prohibited from selling or retaining any identifying information of an individual collected during the verification process. Verification methods include providing a state-issued driver's license or "non-driver identification card"; bank account information; or a debit or credit card. Under the bill, websites that do not comply with user identification requirements would first receive a letter from the attorney general notifying the company of its violation. If new measures are not implemented in 90 days, the company would be fined a civil penalty of up to $5,000 and may be subject to a class one misdemeanor charge. Subsequent violations would open the company up to class six felony charges, according to the bill. A Senate variant defined "covered platforms" similarly but with the small caveat that a website qualifies if 33.3% of its content is considered harmful to minors. On Tuesday, the House version passed out of committee unanimously, while the Senate counterpart was tabled on a five to two vote. And on Wednesday, HB 1053 passed the Senate near-unanimously with 34 "yes" votes — one state senator excused. The legislation went undebated on the floor. If signed into law, South Dakota would become the 20th U.S. state to have passed a law requiring online visitors of adult websites to verify their age. Eighteen of the 19 states have enacted their age-verification law, while Georgia's version of the legislation goes into effect on July 1. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently weighing a Texas case brought by an appeal from the Free Speech Coalition, a group representing the adult entertainment industry, according to NPR. Lawyers for the group argued that a 2023 Texas bill similar to the one passed by the South Dakota Legislature infringes on First Amendment rights for free speech and overly restricts adult access to material that should be protected by the Constitution. The prime sponsor of the House bill, Rep. Bethany Soye, R-Sioux Falls, pointed to Louisiana, one of the first states to pass similar age verification legislation. She said the one-third standard was an "arbitrary" number that other states have tried to copy. "If you look at the decision of the court in each of those places, what they focused on was the one-third standard," Soye told Senate Judiciary members Tuesday. "The idea is, well, OK, one-third of a website is porn, then it's bad for kids, and we should keep them off. If it's 25%, then it's fine. Is that really a compelling state interest? Seems pretty arbitrary." Most of the Tuesday testimony came from supporters of Soye's legislation who focused on the adult entertainment industry and the spread of pornographic content among youth. Lisa Gennaro with Concerned Women for America, a conservative, evangelical Christian nonprofit focused on public policy, said the porn industry is purposefully creating a "flow of content that is toxic for minors." "The porn industry has hijacked our kids, and they know they're doing it," Gennaro said. "They know if they can get them at an early age, then they have a consumer for life." Holly Strand, a forensic examiner with the Pennington County Sheriff's Office, testified to the committee on Tuesday. Strand, who said she is assigned to cases of pornography, exploitation, solicitation and sex trafficking where children are involved, told the committee the word "porn" has trickled down from high school teens into the vocabulary of elementary school children. "About five years ago, we had a kindergartner ask us how to handle pornography, and it was all downhill from there," Strand said. "I had a mom call me … Her son asked her what the word 'anal' meant, and when she asked him where he heard it, his response was, 'There's a kid on the bus that looks at anal on the way to school,' and he doesn't understand why all the kids want to sit next to him when he doesn't even know what that word means." The American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota opposed the legislature's support of the age-verification bill, viewing it as "invasive" and a violation of the privacy and constitutional rights of the state's residents. In a Wednesday press release, ACLU-SD Advocacy Manager Samantha Chapman stated efforts to "childproof the internet" impacts access to information for people broadly, while "failing to actually protect children." "Is there harmful content on the internet for young viewers? Undoubtedly. But not every societal ill requires a solution from the government," Chapman wrote. "We can, and should, make the internet safer for minors. But we can do this without sacrificing our privacy and Constitutional rights." The bill now heads to Gov. Larry Rhoden's desk, where it is likely to be signed into law. This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: South Dakota Senate passes law requiring age verification on porn sites
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Baby box bill passes unanimously in House
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) – The bill that would legalize newborn surrender boxes passed unanimously on the House floor Thursday. House Bill 1044 would allow parents to surrender their newborn babies in a climate-controlled locked box instead of an in-person surrender. 'Sometimes a face-to-face surrender is just too much to bear,' said Rep. Bethany Soye, the bill's prime sponsor. Tribes issuing free ID cards amid ICE raids In states where they're legal, baby boxes are located outside emergency locations like hospitals, police or fire stations. Once someone places a baby inside the box, staff usually retrieve the baby and start doing medical assessments within two minutes. The bill was named after Baby Gabriel, who was found dead and abandoned in a Sioux Falls recycling center this summer. Three days after baby Gabriel was found, the organization Safe Haven Baby Box received a phone call from someone with a South Dakota area code, Soye told the House floor. 'It was a new mother who had just given birth and wanted to know where the nearest newborn surrender box was located,' she added. 'Unfortunately, the answer was Fort Dodge, Iowa and it just wasn't possible for her to get there.' The woman was able to surrender her baby at a hospital as an anonymous 'Jane Doe', but Soye says her call shows the need for baby boxes in the state, as well as people's awareness of them. The bill wouldn't be a mandate, Soye explained, it just makes non-physical surrenders legal with the boxes. The bill also doesn't provide any state funding, but organizations like Right to Life have indicated their willingness to fund the project, something Rep. Tina Mulally appreciates. Along with Mulally, Rep. William Shorma expressed his support for the bill during the House floor hearing. 'I think a safe way for people to bring their child to a point where they can anonymously give the child a chance at life, which is a whole lot better option than the alternative,' Shorma said. All 68 present representatives voted in favor of HB 1044. The bill will now move to Senate committees. The next hearing has not been scheduled yet. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
