Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs is under fire after vetoing a bill that would have criminalized filming pornography at public schools.
State Sen. Jake Hoffman, a Republican, issued a press release blasting the Democratic governor for balking on legislation (SB 1696) that would made it a Class 5 felony to film or facilitate sexually explicit acts in any building funded by taxpayer dollars, including the classrooms of K-12 public schools.
“Once again, Katie Hobbs is spotlighting Democrats’ far-left extremism by vetoing yet another bill intended to protect our children from exposure to sexually explicit materials at the hands of Arizona governments,” Hoffman wrote in a press release. “It’s absolutely sickening that Katie Hobbs is allowing pornography to be filmed in our state’s taxpayer funded classrooms.”
The Governor’s Office issued a statement explaining that the bill was a poor way to address concerns about appropriate content for minors.
“The sponsor has stated that this bill was aimed at preventing a specific action from reoccurring, while in reality it is written in such a vague manner that it serves as little more than a thinly veiled effort to ban books,” the letter from Hobbs said.
State lawmakers drafted the legislation in response to a report of two teachers in Lake Havasu City being fired after it was learned they filmed sexually explicit content on school grounds for the adult platform OnlyFans.
An eighth-grade teacher and a fourth-grade teacher, her husband, were fired as a result.
The couple were discovered after the parent of an eighth-grader said she noticed the woman had a link to the OnlyFans page visible on social media channels under her real name.
“These should be safe spaces for our kids to learn in, not venues for the sexually explicit adult entertainment industry,” Hoffman said. “No 12-year-old child should ever have to worry that their middle school desk was the location of a porn shoot, yet because of Hobbs’ actions, this is precisely the case.”
Hoffman added, “Hobbs should be ashamed of herself, and every parent in the state of Arizona should be outraged.”
