{"id":29460,"date":"2021-02-26T11:39:39","date_gmt":"2021-02-26T17:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=29460"},"modified":"2021-02-26T11:39:39","modified_gmt":"2021-02-26T17:39:39","slug":"bill-would-repeal-educator-obscenity-exemption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=29460","title":{"rendered":"Bill would repeal educator obscenity exemption"},"content":{"rendered":"

Members of the Judiciary Committee heard testimony Feb. 26 on a bill that would repeal a legal protection given to certain educators.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Joni Albrecht<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LB282, sponsored by Thurston Sen. Joni Albrecht, would remove an exemption from prosecution for school or library employees who provide obscenity to minors.<\/p>\n

Albrecht said the bill would close a loophole in Nebraska law that allows an adult to provide obscenity to a child.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Nebraska elementary [and] high schools and libraries it currently is lawful to provide criminal obscenity to any age of school children,\u201d she said. \u201cIt makes no sense that schools and libraries \u2014 of all places \u2014 should be given a path to expose children to material the law already would recognize as criminally obscene.\u201d<\/p>\n

Violation of the state\u2019s obscenity law is a Class I misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in prison, a $1,000 fine or both.<\/p>\n

Matt Heffron, representing the Thomas Moore Society, spoke in support of LB282. He said the exemption for educators in the state\u2019s obscenity statute was intended only for postsecondary instructors and art classes.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The bill] doesn\u2019t do anything as far as teachers are concerned, they would just be held to the same standard as everyone else in the state,\u201d Heffron said. \u201cThis is only to sort out the rogues who might want to present obscenity in schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also speaking in support of the bill was Teresa Davidson, a pediatric nurse practitioner and anti-human trafficking advocate. She said children\u2019s minds are not developed enough to process sexually explicit images.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing exposed to sexually explicit material places children at risk from all kinds of predators, which is why it\u2019s critical that a [legal] loophole that allows obscene material to be provided to children be closed,\u201d Davidson said.<\/p>\n

Opposing the bill was Hunter Traynor, speaking on behalf of the Nebraska Library Association. The bill runs counter to the Nebraska ideal of local control, he said, and would curtail the discretion librarians need to do their jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cLibrary boards and school boards are better forums for concerned parents than our courts of law,\u201d Traynor said. \u201cLocal control allows librarians to meet the needs of their communities and respond swiftly to any [situation].\u201d<\/p>\n

The committee took no immediate action on the bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Members of the Judiciary Committee heard testimony Feb. 26 on a bill that would repeal a legal protection given to certain educators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[188],"class_list":["post-29460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-judiciary","tag-sen-joni-albrecht"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29461,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29460\/revisions\/29461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}