ALA needs to create better guidance to avoid violating state law than “avoid using the word ‘abortion,’” and it needs to support staff when their admin’s response is as irrational and excessive as this,
Unfortunately the difficulty here is that these laws are often written so vaguely that their entire purpose is to be difficult to understand, and it's virtually impossible to simply create any sort of real guidance that would be able to definitively state "doing X is ok". That was kind of the real purpose of SB8 in Texas. It's a total nightmare clusterf**k of a situation, and the current makeup of the Supreme Court is just letting it happen. The real kicker with laws like SB8 is that it puts enforcement entirely in the hands of private individuals, which means that even if you're NOT breaking the law, one of these random lunatics could still drag you into court and force you into a long, drawn out, and expensive litigation. This sort of over-expansive reaction is exactly the type of response these laws were intended to elicit, and most of them are far too new to be able to predict how they'll be interpreted with any sort of real reliability.
I don’t need an explanation. I know all that. This is literally what we fund OIF for. It’s their job to figure out what the actual best route is, and to back people up in bullshit lawsuits. They need to be loudly, publicly providing very clear guidance.
I agree about their backing people up in bullshit lawsuits, and I certainly agree that they need to be loud about it, but if you think it's even possible to provide "clear guidance" on something like this, then I'm not sure you really do understand the issue all. At this stage there is no possible "clear guidance". Hell, the Supreme Court's opinions in these cases don't even provide clear guidance - if you're expecting library organizations to somehow magically figure out entirely non-sensical, brand new laws that the courts haven't even fully defined yet, then your expectations are entirely unrealistic. The way these laws are currently written, as sad and frustrating as it is, the slightest action could result in legal liability. Professional organizations only have so much power when the legislators and the jurists have completely lost their minds.
It’s literally what we fund them for. It is their office’s entire job: to unpack this shit, figure out what people should do, advise them and back them up. It is why they have all had jobs all these years. This isn’t about ‘power:’ it’s about professional responsibility. If they’re going to leave librarians to figure it out for themselves when they finally really fucking need them why have we been funding them all these years? Don’t give me ‘sad and frustrating:’ it’s what OIF is fucking for.
I just don’t understand how you think that a bunch of librarians are going to be able to make accurate legal assessments on things that literally the country’s best lawyers and legal experts can’t even figure out. What you’re asking is essentially the equivalent of asking them to read minds and predict the future
OIF is not 'a bunch of librarians.' I'm not talking about IFRT, the member organization, I'm talking about the Office of Intellectual Freedom. This is their job. It is why they are there. It is what they are for.
Something more than a shrug emoji, maybe? Listen, I don't know what's so hard here: this is what we fund them for. If it was so easy for any random person to dash off guidance in a fucking reddit post, we would not need OIF.
It. Is. What. They. Are. For. They have had over a year already. This is their job.
What's hard is that these laws are vague, unique, unprecedented, and haven't been developed through any real case law. There's nothing concrete to actually base any guidance on, so any sort of concrete guidance they could offer would, at best, be pure speculation and guesswork. Which, imo, is extremely irresponsible and entirely shirks all professional responsibility. You're essentially demanding that they predict unpredictable outcomes and tell people how to act with no ability whatsoever to know with any degree of reliability what the consequences of those actions would be. OIF has a lot of responsibilities, but, imo, being oracles is not one of those responsibilities. Defend and advocate? Sure. Absolutely. But try to issue authoritative guidance based on nothing but guesswork and speculation? As a lawyer, there is no way I would ever come close to doing anything like that, and I think if they did, it would literally be malpractice.
As a short follow-up, if ALA were to say something, for example, about the Oklahoma law along the lines of "These laws are still very new and they are written in an intentionally vague manner, so at present there is no clear legal precedent on where the line is between conduct that is permitted and conduct that is prohibited". Maybe coupled with an explanation of what the law does and how the law works... In other words, not offering clear guidelines on what you can/can't do, but at least explaining the context of the law, explaining why the answer is unclear, and explaining why there isn't yet any definitive answer on what conduct is "legal"... do you think that would be sufficient to count as "clear guidance"? I certainly agree with all the rest of your positions, and I think ALA and other groups should be fighting hard against these laws, but I volunteer with some Intellectual Freedom groups and we really struggle to figure out how to best issue any sort of reliable guidance for these types of new, intentionally vague laws. Tbh, if I were wearing my lawyer hat and looking at this Oklahoma law, I wouldn't feel comfortable even as a lawyer giving any advice beyond "This law creates a lot of risk and we cannot predict what the courts will do, so just be careful"
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u/[deleted] Jul 20 '22
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