The judge in the lawsuit filed against Texas's book "sexual rating" law, set to go into effect today, September 1, is issuing a preliminary injunction barring implementation of the law.
During a status call held via Zoom yesterday, Judge Alan D. Albright of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin Division, said that he would issue a written preliminary injunction order in the next few weeks. In the interim, the state cannot enforce any part of the law.
The suit against the law was filed in July by BookPeople, the Austin bookstore, Blue Willow Bookshop, Houston, the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
The plaintiffs charged that the law "violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution because it is an overbroad and vague content-based law that targets protected speech and is not narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest. The [law] compels plaintiffs to express the government's views, even if they do not agree, and operates as a prior restraint, two of the most egregious constitutional infringements."
Under the law, all companies selling to school libraries, librarians, and teachers in Texas would have to assign ratings to books concerning their sexual content. (Titles for required curricula are exempted from the law.) A book deemed "sexually explicit" would be banned, and a book deemed "sexually relevant" would have restricted access. The "sexually relevant" rating would cover, plaintiffs said, all non-explicit references, in any context, to sexual relations, and therefore "could apply broadly to health-related works, religious texts, historical works, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and many other works," including many classic works of literature.
The "sexually explicit" rating would apply to material describing or portraying "sexual conduct" that is determined to be "patently offensive," which Texas state law defines as an affront to "current community standards of decency."
The law also has a retroactive feature: by next April, all booksellers and other book vendors would have to submit to the Texas Education Agency a list of every book they've ever sold to a teacher, librarian, or school that qualifies for a sexual rating and is in active use. The stores also would be required to issue recalls for any sexually explicit books. If the Agency found that a bookstore has been incorrectly rating books, it could be banned from doing business with charter schools or school districts. The Agency could also override booksellers' ratings.
Many companies and organizations that would be affected by the law said it would be both time-consuming and expensive to comply with.
The plaintiffs issued a joint statement yesterday: "We are grateful for the Court's swift action in deciding to enjoin this law, in the process preserving the long-established rights of local communities to set their own standards; protecting the constitutionally protected speech of authors, booksellers, publishers and readers; preventing the state government from unlawfully compelling speech on the part of private citizens; and shielding Texas businesses from the imposition of impossibly onerous conditions. We look forward to reading the court's full opinion once it is issued."
The ABA added: "On behalf of our members in Texas and booksellers across the country, the American Booksellers Association is grateful for the Court's decision today. ABA is committed to supporting the rights of independent bookstores and the rights of readers and we hope that this suit is resolved in favor of both."
The Texas Attorney General's office said it would move to reverse the injunction and appeal the judge's decision, the Texas Tribune reported.