Booksellers at front lines of fight against Texas books bans

A group of booksellers, publishers and authors filed a lawsuit Tuesday to stop a new law in Texas that would require stores to rate books based on sexual content, arguing the measure would violate their First Amendment rights and be all but impossible to implement.

The law, set to take effect in September, would force booksellers to evaluate and rate each title they sell to schools, as well as books they sold in the past. If they fail to comply, stores would be banned from doing business with schools.

“It will be a huge burden,” Valerie Koehler, the owner of Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, said of the law. She estimates that schools account for some 20% of her store’s sales. “It’s unfathomable to think that we would need to rate every book, not only ones that we’d sell in the future to schools, but also any books we’ve sold in the past.”

The Texas law and the legal battle to block it reflect a new front in an ongoing culture war over book banning and what constitutes appropriate reading material for children.

In the past two years, book bans have surged in the United States, driven by conservative activists who have targeted books about race and racism or LGBTQ issues and characters. An array of new laws have passed around the country making it easier to remove books from libraries and placing new restrictions on the types of titles children can access.

While the fight has largely centered on books that are available in school classrooms and libraries, the legislation in Texas has drawn booksellers directly into the conflict.

Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed the bill into law in June, championed it as a way for parents to exercise more control over the books available to their children. “Some school libraries have books with sexually explicit and vulgar materials,” he said during the bill signing session. “I’m signing a law that gets that trash out of our schools.”

Many of the restrictions on books available in schools and libraries have been promoted under the banner of giving parents more choice over the content their children encounter. But the plaintiffs said that the Texas law would take decisions out of the hands of schools and parents and put the burden on vendors instead.

The law’s opponents also argue the legislation will increase the number of book bans in Texas, which already leads the country in removing books from schools, according to an analysis by the free speech organization PEN America.

The suit was brought by two Texas independent bookstores — Koehler’s Blue Willow Bookshop and Bookpeople, in Austin — together with the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

It was brought against state library and education officials who are responsible for implementing the law.