To amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit a publishing house from knowingly furnishing sexually explicit material to a school or an educational agency, to prohibit Federal funds from being provided to a school that obtains or an educational agency that distributes sexually explicit material, and for other purposes.
2/4/2025, 4:28 PMSummary of Bill HR 863
Bill 118 hr 863 aims to amend title 18 of the United States Code to prevent publishing houses from knowingly providing sexually explicit material to schools or educational agencies. The bill also seeks to prohibit federal funds from being allocated to schools or educational agencies that acquire or distribute sexually explicit material. The main goal of this legislation is to ensure that inappropriate content is not being disseminated in educational settings, particularly to students. The bill includes provisions to enforce these restrictions and outlines penalties for violations. Overall, the focus of this bill is on protecting students and maintaining appropriate standards in educational materials.Congressional Summary of HR 863
This bill establishes new criminal offenses related to furnishing sexually explicit material (i.e., books, magazines, newspapers, or other printed material and digital or electronic books) to elementary or secondary schools or state or local educational agencies. It also prohibits federal funds for schools that obtain or educational agencies that distribute such material.
Specifically, the bill makes it a crime for a president, director, manager, or officer of a publishing house to knowingly authorize the furnishing of published material containing a sexually explicit visual depiction to schools or educational agencies. A violator is subject to criminal penalties—a fine, a prison term of up to five years, or both.
The bill imposes a fine on a publishing house that knowingly furnishes such published material to schools or educational agencies.
The bill also prohibits federal funds from being provided to (1) schools that knowingly obtain such published material, and (2) educational agencies that knowingly distribute such material to schools.
The bill includes exceptions for material with serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
