In 2023, the Texas Legislature enacted the “READER Act” (HB900), which aimed to regulate the books available in public school libraries. The law required libraries to adopt standards for evaluating materials deemed “sexually explicit” or “sexually relevant,” compelled booksellers to rate any book they had sold or might sell to schools according to those standards, and prohibited schools from purchasing materials labeled as explicit. Booksellers who failed to comply with the state’s ratings, or with state revisions of those ratings, would be barred from selling to any public school in Texas.
A coalition of Texas bookstores, national retailers, authors, and publishers challenged the law, arguing that it imposed an unconstitutional burden on the book industry. The plaintiffs emphasized that HB900 would require bookstores, publishers, and large online retailers to review and label millions of books based on vague state-defined criteria, without meaningful standards or any mechanism for judicial review. The coalition argued that this amounted to censorship and would severely restrict the freedom to publish and access books.
In October 2025, Judge Alan D. Albright of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas (Austin Division) granted in part the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment and issued a permanent injunction blocking enforcement of the READER Act, following an earlier preliminary injunction. The Court held that the law was vague, failing to specify which community standards should apply and deviating from the Supreme Court’s established definition of obscenity.
Following the ruling, representatives of the plaintiff organizations (Valerie Koehler, owner of Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop; Gregory Day, the Interim General Manager of Austin, Texas-based bookstore, BookPeople; Allison K Hill, CEO of the American Booksellers Association; Maria A. Pallante, President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers; Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild; and Jeff Trexler, Interim Director of Comic Book Legal Defense Fund) issued a joint statement celebrating the decision:
Today’s decision affirms the constitutional rights of authors, booksellers, publishers, and readers, and protects bookstores from the imposition of an unreasonable law that would have threatened their viability, making it a huge win for Texas businesses. We thank Judge Albright for a critically important ruling that is clear, concise, and extremely well-reasoned.
The IPA welcomes the victory in the READER case as a demonstration of how the publishing industry can effectively defend the freedom to publish and free expression by acting collectively to challenge such restrictions.
The full ruling can be found here.