Judge Strikes Down Texas Book-Rating Law, but Censorship Battles in Schools Persist

A federal judge has blocked a key provision of Texas's book-rating law, HB 900 by Rep. Jared Patterson, otherwise known as the READER Act (Restricting Explicit and Adult Designated Educational Resources), marking a win for book vendors. Under HB 900, vendors were required to rate every book sold to public school libraries for sexual explicitness, and schools were forbidden from purchasing titles flagged as "sexually explicit". It is unclear what effect remains of a December 2023 State Board of Education rule requiring each school district to adopt a book collection development policy prohibiting library material "rated sexually explicit material by the selling library material vendor."

On Oct. 22, U.S. District Judge Alan D. Albright, an appointee of President Donald Trump, ruled the vendor-rating mandate unconstitutional, calling it "subjective, confusing, and unworkable." The decision followed a series of rulings by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirming that key portions of HB 900 likely violate free-speech protections. While Texas could appeal the decision, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit had already upheld the district court's finding that the law unconstitutionally compels speech, and the full court later rejected the state's request for a rehearing in January 2024.

Before the court issued its final ruling, lawmakers had already tried to preempt the READER Act's legal challenges through Senate Bill 13, passed earlier this year. SB 13 shifted focus from state-imposed vendor ratings to local oversight, giving parents greater access to library records and creating new advisory councils dominated by parent representatives.

While supporters framed SB 13 as a "local control" fix, it still burdens school districts with subjective content standards, additional paperwork, and inconsistent expectations from community to community. In practice, it mirrors the same censorship pressures as HB 900, this time dressed in local governance language.

While both laws' ostensible goal is to protect children from inappropriate content, overwhelmingly, the state has used them as a censorship instrument that places books addressing LGBTQ+ identities and communities of color at risk of removal.

While the vendor-rating component of HB 900 is disabled for now, other parts remain active - most notably the library collection standards adopted by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission in late 2023, which, alongside SB 13's local mandates, have created a patchwork of censorship across the state. This censorship leaves educators uncertain about what's permissible and students with fewer opportunities to see themselves reflected in the books they read.

Such laws distract from real classroom needs by turning teachers and librarians into culture war referees instead of educators dedicated to serving their students' needs with appropriate and relevant instructional materials. The fight over HB 900 was won in the courts, but the broader struggle for intellectual freedom in Texas classrooms is far from over.