A federal appeals court is hearing a case challenging a Texas state law that would require booksellers to rate every book in the state's school libraries based on its sexual content.
The "Reader Act," which was signed into law on June 12 and is currently blocked while the case is litigated, "requires library material vendors to issue appropriate ratings related to sexually explicit material and sexually relevant material previously sold to a public school district or public school."
The bill would "prohibit the possession, acquisition, and purchase of any harmful material or library material that is sexually explicit or pervasively vulgar or educationally unsuitable," "recognize that obscene content is not constitutionally protected" and require vendors "to issue a recall for all copies of such material in active use."
In addition, the law would "prohibit the removal of material based solely on the ideas contained therein or the personal background of the material's author or characters."
In September, a U.S. District Court judge blocked the law from going into effect and opening statements for the case "Book People vs. Martha Wong" began Wednesday morning in New Orleans.
While the law carves out exceptions for books included as part of a curriculum in schools, vendors still argue it places an undue burden on them.
"That is not physically possible," Charley Resjek, CEO of Austin bookseller, Book People, which is a plaintiff in the case, told KWTX. "There’s no way that I could pay booksellers to read and rate every book that’s available to schools and a stay in business."
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Republican State Representative Jared Patterson, who penned the bill in the Texas Legislature, said the lawsuit was being challenged by "liberal book store owners who want to keep pushing sexually explicit materials into the hands of our children."
"In summary, ‘Nothing in the First Amendment prevents the state from adopting standards for its own officials to keep pornographic materials out of public schools, or from requiring that schools give parents notice of what is being provided to their children,’" he wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
If the court rules in favor of the law, book vendors would need to rate school books by April for the 2024 school year.
