Federal Court Blocks Texas Law Mandating School Library Vendors to Provide Sexual Content Ratings for Books
Jose Nino
|
A federal court recently blocked the Texas state government from enforcing part of a state law to shield children from sexually explicit content in schools.
However, there is already a challenge to the measure being litigated.
On January 17, 2024 a three-judge panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a lower court’s preliminary injunction against a critical section of House Bill 900 that mandated vendors to rate books sold to Texas schools according to their sexual content.
HB 900, also known as the READER (Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources) Act, passed in 2023 as a Republican priority and was immediately challenged.
The plaintiffs in this case are a coalition of book venders and publishing houses. The appellate court declared that plaintiffs are likely to have success on the merits of their assertion that the book rating regulation infringes on their First Amendment rights.
Plaintiffs described the regulation as “textbook compelled speech.” Circuit Judge Don Willett , a former member of the Texas Supreme Court, wrote the court’s opinion.
Willett wrote the following: “In short, the Act requires school book vendors who want to do business with Texas public schools to issue sexual-content ratings for all library materials they have ever sold (or will sell), flagging any materials deemed to be ‘sexually explicit’ or ‘sexually relevant’ based on the materials’ depictions of or references to sex.”
State Representative Jared Patterson put forward the law due to how many Texas school districts refused to remove books filled with sexually explicit content that were discovered in school libraries. Many local parents challenged these books as being inappropriate for young children.
The READER Act was passed with bipartisan support, and it was subsequently signed into law in June 2023.
In July, plaintiffs filed a lawsuit asserting that the READER Act was unconstitutionally ambiguous and over-broad in its language. They argued that the law abrogated “long-established rights of local communities to set and implement standards for school materials within constitutional boundaries” and compelled “private businesses to act as instruments of state censorship on controversial topics under threat of retaliation.”
A federal district court awarded the plaintiffs’ a preliminary injunction to bar the state from enforcing the law when it went into effect on September 1, 2023.
The Texas state government immediately appealed the injunction to the Fifth Circuit and obtained a temporary stay of the injunction, which gave the state the power to enforce the law as the litigation process continued.
In November, a three-judge panel listened to arguments to address the state government’s appeal of the injunction and raised questions about the case’s merits.
The Fifth Circuit panel reached the following conclusion, “The ratings READER requires are neither factual nor uncontroversial. The statute requires vendors to undertake contextual analyses, weighing and balancing many factors to determine a rating for each book. Balancing a myriad of factors that depend on community standards is anything but the mere disclosure of factual information. And it has already proven controversial.”
On January 17, 2024, Patterson published a statement urging the Texas Attorney General’s office to appeal the Fifth Circuit’s decision to the United States Supreme Court.
The Texas state government is finally waking up to the necessity of using state power to enforce public morality. This is the only way to combat the degenerate cultural Left.
Nevertheless, these leftist are relentless. They will not stand down so easily.
In turn, the Right must be ready for drawn out struggles against the Left. The fight to restore order will not be easy.
Share: