The 2023 Texas law requiring booksellers and publishers to rate their books based on sexual content and references has been declared unconstitutional in a Waco court.
A federal judge on Tuesday declared House Bill 900, also known as the READER Act, violates the Constitution. The ruling makes permanent a lower court's temporary injunction that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals later upheld.
The law firm Haynes Boone, which represented the coalition of plaintiffs that sued to block the law, said in a statement the ruling is a "major First Amendment victory."
"The READER Act would have imposed impossible obligations on booksellers and limited access to literature, including classic works, for students across Texas," attorney Laura Lee Prather said in the statement.
HB 900 sought to restrict which books are available in school libraries and required booksellers to rate their own books based on sexual content. The Texas Education Agency could have overridden the ratings to prevent school libraries from obtaining books.
In a statement shared on X, the bill's author, state Rep. Jared Patterson, said he was "deeply disappointed" by the judge's ruling, but said he had proactively worked during the recent legislative session to pass a different law to close what he called the "obscenity loophole."
Senate Bill 412, he said, "holds accountable school personnel, or others, who choose to expose children to harmful explicit content."
Copyright 2025 KERA
