It has been a two-year-long legal battle involving a Texas law (HB 900) and most likely will reach an end after a federal court judge ruled Tuesday that the law violates the U.S. Constitution. A similar ruling made by an appeals court, the judgment marks the third time the law has been declared unconstitutional by federal courts.
Judge Alan D. Albright of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin division, ordered a permanent injunction to block the mandatory book ratings law. Texas’s HB 900, better known as the “Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources Act,” would have required book vendors to put content ratings on their books. The Texas Education Agency would have been able to overrule those ratings, and failure to comply would have led to the removal of books from school libraries. This ruling was the last major step barring an appeal by Texas to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Compels speech, is void for vagueness, and is an unconstitutional prior restraint” and that “Plaintiffs’ First and Fourteenth Amendment claims are all successful.”
Judge Alan D. Albright of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Austin division.
The CBLDF (Comic Book Legal Defense Fund) posted a statement about their recent victory over READER, saying “Another victory for the CBLDF and our co-plaintiffs in our lawsuit to strike down Texas HB900, a recently enacted law that seeks to impose a ratings system on books distributed to Texas schools. Proponents of this law expressly targeted graphic novels, and the ratings system would have effectively been a government-mandated successor to the notorious Comics Code.“
In September 2023, Judge Alan D. Albright issued an injunction to stop the enforcement of Texas Law HB900, and released a written opinion that states that has stated that the law was unconstitutional. The State of Texas appealed the lawsuit, which led to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals (U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals) lifting the injunction while it considered the case. In his written opinion, Albright stated that the law violated the First Amendment because it was too vague and compelled booksellers to publish book ratings that they may not agree with.
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In January 2024, the Appellate Court, one of the most conservative courts in the nation, sided with the booksellers who sued the state after claiming that HB 900 had violated their First Amendment Rights. The court affirmed the lower court’s decision to prevent TEA Commissioner Mike Morath from enforcing the 2023 law. “We start and end with the compelled-speech claim because we conclude that Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of that claim. Accordingly, we need not address whether they are also likely to succeed on their claims that [HB 900] is a prior restraint or unconstitutionally vague.”
Source: KXAN AUSTIN, CLBDF, Publisher’s Weekly
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