Good. Very good.
A Waco federal judge has permanently blocked Texas from enforcing the key provision of a 2023 law restricting the content of school library books, ruling Wednesday that a requirement that vendors rate each title for sexual explicitness is unconstitutional.
The order is another win for the plaintiffs– a collection of book sellers, publishers and authors, including Austin’s BookPeople and Houston’s Blue Willow Books – after the same federal court temporarily suspended most of House Bill 900, or the READER Act, in 2024.
The law forbid schools from purchasing books that vendors or the state’s education agency deemed “sexually explicit,” and would have also required districts to buy only from sellers who rate their books according to new state guidelines.
While the state could appeal the ruling, it would be an uphill battle. In January 2024, a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals – widely seen as the most conservative appeals court in the country – upheld the district’s judges finding that the law unconstitutionally compels speech on the part of book vendors, and the full court rejected Texas’ request for a rehearing.
In Wednesday’s 24-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Alan Albright, an appointee of President Donald Trump, called the law’s rating requirements “subjective, confusing, and unworkable.”
“The Court agrees with Defendant that Texas has a strong interest in regulating what children can access in schools and preventing inappropriate content from schools,” wrote Albright. “But READER’s methods are not the way to further that interest.”
The state had argued that the ratings were “government speech” and that First Amendment protections did not apply, but both Albright and the 5th Circuit rejected that point.
[…]
While the order keeps HB 900 largely toothless for the foreseeable future, Texas has doubled down on book restrictions in the years since the lawsuit was filed. In December 2023, the State Board of Education required schools to purge “sexually explicit” books from library shelves, citing HB 900. Those library standards remain in effect. Earlier this year, the Legislature passed legislation that would make librarians and teachers criminally liable for exposing children to “harmful” content. HB 900’s author, Republican state Rep. Jared Patterson of Frisco, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the decision on Wednesday but highlighted his role in sponsoring the new law, Senate Bill 412.
See here for the previous update. Not a whole lot to add here, just that we must acknowledge how obviously unconstitutional that law must have been to be treated as it was by a Trump judge and the Fifth freaking Circuit. The fight isn’t over, as that last paragraph reminds us, but the remedy remains the same: Win more elections, elect better people. KERA has more.
Time for a FOIA request to see how much it cost texas taxpayers to defend this.