With many states and smaller local governments in the U.S. banning or attempting to ban books, Illinois’ state government is doing the opposite, penalizing book bans by withdrawing funding from libraries that restrict or remove books due to “partisan or doctrinal” disapproval.
I don’t personally care for the penalty that’s imposed, as removing access to libraries inherently affects less affluent socioeconomic groups much more harshly. Political action towards banning a book from a library should result in all libraries receiving the book in question to be stored accessibly in the appropriate book section. Like a weaponized Streisand effect in the pursuit of greater literacy and the protection of the ideal that knowledge is a human right.
I was thinking along similar lines tbh. I couldn’t help thinking that, given bad faith actors (to which there seems to be no lack of), they might exploit this law to drum up a false argument that certain libraries are “refusing” to carry books they want them to carry to deprive them of funding.
However, to my limited knowledge, outside of perhaps safety & accessibility regulations there aren’t typically precedents for compelling an organization to carry non-critical materials. That said, as the law itself is apparently setting a precedent to begin with, I agree that it would have been preferable to create such a precedent for information accessibility.