SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Legislation at the South Dakota state Capitol in Pierre is providing an example of how quickly the tone of a political conversation can turn intense in 2025.

House Bill 1239 deals with a topic that has commanded national attention in recent years: what should and should not be available to kids in a library. The legislation originally would have made it easier for librarians to face charges if they let kids check out “obscene” or “harmful” material. After an amendment, the bill now says schools and libraries need to have a policy allowing parents to question whether a book is “obscene” for kids. It would then be up to the library or school board to decide if that’s true, and the matter could go in front of a judge.

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Republican Travis Ismay, who represents northwestern South Dakota in the state House of Representatives, made it clear what he thought of questionable material in the hands of his family during a House Education Committee hearing on Feb. 19. Shortly before Ismay’s commentary, a hypothetical was discussed: librarians finding themselves in handcuffs.

“If a librarian rented this out to my son or daughter, you’d be lucky if you got hauled out of there in handcuffs,” Ismay said on Feb. 19.

HB 1239 eventually made it out of the House on a 38 to 32 vote. The Senate considered the legislation Monday, with Republican Taffy Howard of the Rapid City area arguing passionately to keep certain material away from kids.

“None of our children should be exposed to this garbage,” Howard said on the Senate floor. “It’s absolute garbage. And no one, I don’t care what your job is, no one should be able to hide behind their job and use that as a way to provide this garbage to our children. And I don’t know that any of our librarians are. I don’t know that any of them are. I would like to think none of our librarians are.”

And Elizabeth Fox, president of the South Dakota Library Association, thinks along similar lines.

“No librarian that I have ever met goes out and intends to produce, or provide, materials to a minor that’s going to harm them,” Fox said Tuesday. “That’s not why we became librarians. That being said, everybody’s reading tastes are different, and that includes kids.”

But Howard’s argument also echoes Ismay’s, and Fox doesn’t appreciate it.

“If somebody had knowingly given that to my children when they were little, I’m, I’d want them strung up from the nearest tree,” Howard said Monday.

“In many instances in South Dakota, libraries are run by people with little or no training who have not chosen the books and have not read them and do not know their content,” Fox said. “And I think the rhetoric around this is extreme.”

For Fox, the current climate toward librarians is a problem… one which has led her to look beyond South Dakota.

“There is a house near Walla Walla, Washington that I had considered putting an offer on, to leave South Dakota,” Fox said. “I feel personally betrayed.”

KELOLAND News spoke with Howard on the phone Tuesday afternoon and asked her about the comment concerning “the nearest tree.” She described that as “an exaggeration” and also said she likely “could have chosen better words.” She also made clear that that is not something she would have literally done.

KELOLAND News also reached Ismay via email and asked him about his comment on being “lucky if you got hauled out of there in handcuffs.” Ismay replied with the following: “My stance has not changed in the least and I have nothing to add.”

The amended HB 1239 passed the full House Tuesday by a vote of 36 to 34.