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A Texas law that would require booksellers and publishers to rate their books based on sexual content and references was declared unconstitutional in federal court.
The court’s decision upholds and makes permanent an earlier decision from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocking House Bill 900, or the READER Act that was passed in 2023.
What they’re saying:
Judge Alan Albright, in his ruling Tuesday, said that while the court agreed that Texas has a “strong interest” in preventing inappropriate content from schools and children the wording of the READER Act was “void for vagueness” and an “unconstitutional prior restraint.”
Attorney Laura Lee Prather called the decision a “victory for protecting the First Amendment rights of booksellers.”
“The READER Act would have imposed impossible obligations on booksellers and limited access to literature, including classic works, for students across Texas,” Prather said. “We are proud to stand up for free expression and the First Amendment rights of all Texans.”
Prather represented the plaintiffs in the case.
The READER Act
Passed in 2023, the READER Act would have required booksellers to categorize books they sell or have ever sold to schools by standards for sexually explicit and sexually relevant materials set by the Texas State Library and Archives. Schools would then be restricted from buying books deemed sexually explicit and remove already purchased books from shelves. The law would have also required parental consent for any books deemed sexually relevant.
The Texas Education Agency would oversee the ratings and have the ability to overrule a vendor’s rating. It would have blocked vendors who did not comply with the rating system from selling books at schools. The law allowed exceptions for books used as part of a school’s curriculum.Â
House Bill 900 was authored by Frisco state Rep. Jared Patterson.
The Source: Information in this article comes from the Western Texas Federal District Court and previous FOX 4 reporting. Comments from Attorney Laura Lee Prather come from a release from Haynes Boone.Â