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California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signed a bill into law that could impose heavy fines on school districts that try to ban books portraying LGBTQ+ people and other historically marginalized communities. The bill comes as a direct response to recent attempts by California’s more conservative areas to censor library and classroom materials seen as promoting racial or sexual diversity. This includes the city of Temecula, whose school board voted this summer to ban an elementary school textbook that mentions gay rights advocate Harvey Milk. “Remarkable that we’re living in a country right now in this banning binge, this cultural purge that we’re experiencing all throughout America, and now increasingly here in the state of California, where we have school districts large and small banning books, banning free speech, criminalizing librarians and teachers,” Newsom said as he signed Assembly Bill 1078. “We want to do more than just push back rhetorically against that, and that’s what this legislation provides.”
