In a moral panic over allegedly damagingly filthy content in books that schoolchildren could access, Texas passed a law in 2023 known as the Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources (READER) Act. Aspects of the law that compelled certain behaviors from vendors who sold books into the school system were overturned last week in a decision in Book People v. Wong from U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas Judge Alan D. Albright.
The law's purpose, as the decision summarized it, was "to regulate access to school library books deemed 'sexually explicit'" (which were to be barred entirely) "or 'sexually relevant'" (which were to require parental consent).
