Texas’ Bookban Is So Bad, Booksellers Say It Violates The Constitution

// Remember back when we were growing up and books like Fahrenheit 451 crammed it down our throats that book burning and book bans weren’t good? Well, that’s been about as successful as Hilary’s presidential run. Florida has been making headlines for preventing students from reading dastardly books like…dictionaries, and Texas is vying to upstage them.  Come September, a law will be in effect that requires book sellers to vet and rate their books based on “sexually explicit” content. Violators will be prevented from selling any books to Texas schools. Any violating books will be pulled from libraries. Understandably, booksellers are willing to go to court over this, and they’ve adopting rhetoric reminiscent of the recent 303 Creative case to do it. From Reuters:

The new lawsuit, filed in Austin federal court on Tuesday, asserts that the legislation “compels plaintiffs to express the government’s views, even if they do not agree,” in violation of the First Amendment’s free speech protections.
…
The standards for what constitutes “explicit” material are also unconstitutionally vague, according to the complaint.

“As guided by history and U.S. Supreme Court precedent, the government should not dictate what is allowed in the marketplace of ideas,” the lawsuit said.

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Admittedly a guess on my part, sentences like “Intersex people exist” or “Maybe gays shouldn’t be like, stoned to death” would likely trigger Texas’s fancy thought policing law. If Florida’s laws are any indication of the direction this book ban will go in, classics like “Malala: A Hero For All” and “Proud: Living My American Dream.” I know that the politicians in favor of this are framing it as a policy meant to protect children, but somebody needs to sit down with them and have a heart to heart about when and where books are the appropriate medium to do so. I know that reading is fundamental, but between banning a social sciences textbook that acknowledges gay people exist and this:

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One year after Uvalde, Dallas schools are giving 5-year-olds a Winnie-the-Pooh book about how to survive an active shooter. Texas is more likely to ban these books than AR-15s.https://t.co/7eSp0ryng7

— Ibram X. Kendi (@ibramxk) May 31, 2023

… I think that Texas adults should start focusing on policies that actually help children. And I mean that materially, not just by preventing them from reading. Time would be better spent focusing on child healthcare (it has the highest rate of uninsured children in the country), housing children (between 2020 and 2021, 93,000 Texan children were homeless), and giving kids access to more books (Texas is the next to last least literate state in the union). Maybe once Texas focuses on those things they won’t be ranked 45th out of 50 when you look at child well being.

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Publishers, booksellers Sue Texas Over Public School Book Ban [Reuters]

Earlier: Florida’s Anti-Woke Law Is So Bad For Free Speech That Teachers Are Having A Hard Time Constructing Curricula Around It

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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Book Ban, First Amendment, Free Speech, Texas