'A lot of confusion': Booksellers decry book ban laws like Texas HB 900 during SXSW 2024

As a new Texas law requiring book vendors to rate materials they sell to schools on sexual explicitness remains on hold, book industry representatives point to confusion and ambiguity surrounding new rules that seek to ban certain books in schools and public libraries.

At a panel discussion at South by Southwest in Austin on Monday covering book bans and censorship, Charley Rejsek, CEO of Austin independent book shop BookPeople, joined other industry officials to discuss how some states, such as Texas, are passing laws to restrict the content people consume.

“We don't know why people are buying books," Rejsek said.

The Legislature in May passed House Bill 900, or the READER Act, which forbids schools to purchase books deemed "sexually explicit" and requires them to buy from sellers who rate their books according to new state guidelines. Gov. Greg Abbott signed HB 900 into law in June and the law was set take effect in September, but portions of it have remained on hold because of a lawsuit tied up in appeals court.

BookPeople, other Texas book shops and industry groups brought the lawsuit in July over concerns that the law infringes on businesses' free speech rights, is unreasonably costly to comply with and is unreasonably vague.

“This law has sown a lot of confusion in our communities about what they can and can't do, and it's already creating self-censorship,” Rejsek said. “Schools and librarians tend to err on the side of safety if they think something is against the law.”

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, school libraries have fielded more frequent challenges to books that students can access on campuses. Those raising the concerns worry that some books contain inappropriate content and overtly sexual material. Opponents to such challenges insist that the state-implemented bans target marginalized and minority groups and limit students' access to information.

Under HB 900 — authored by Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco — vendors selling books to schools would have to rate content that is sexually relevant or explicit by April 1. The law prohibits schools from buying books from vendors that don’t use the rating system and from purchasing sexually explicit books.

One of the biggest challenges that the SXSW panelists discussed surrounding laws limiting books in public spaces is the feasibility of executing the new guidelines.

It’s just not feasible for book vendors to comply with the law, Rejsek said.

HB 900 has already caused some school districts to pull books off shelves out of concern of future enforcement, she said.

Amid challenges, why school library books are important to Austin-area students

Challenges to books and lawsuits over rules trying to regulate library materials have swept the nation in the past four years.

In December, a federal judge temporarily blocked an Iowa law that would ban books depicting sex acts from schools.

From July to December 2022, national nonprofit PEN America, which tracks book challenges, logged 1,477 individual books banned from school libraries nationwide. With 438 instances, Texas led with the most instances of book banning.

The book bans, however, extend beyond school libraries.

Last week, a former librarian sued Llano County for her firing after she refused to remove books from the public library.

These laws put librarians between a rock and a hard place, said Adam Webb, library director of Garland County in Arkansas and executive director of Advocates for All Arkansas Libraries.

On the one hand, compliance with laws that censor books could mean violating the U.S. Constitution’s free speech clauses, an offense public employees could get fired over, Webb said.

On the other hand, “if you fight back on it, your local government might get fed up with you being the nail that sticks up and then they fire you,” Webb said.

The Texas law is frustrating to some students because its process didn’t include enough input from young people, said Da’Taeveyon Daniels, a high school student in Fort Worth and director of partnerships for Students Engaged in Advancing Texas.

“It's telling young people, in my opinion, that we don't matter,” Daniels said.

The idea that books can get pulled from shelves through parent complaints is “tone deaf as hell,” Daniels said.

Not every student has the economic or social resources to access books outside of public school settings, he said. If a book isn’t in the school library, it’s simply not available to some students, he noted.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: At SXSW, booksellers, librarians decry book ban laws like Texas HB 900