With less than a month remaining in the legislative session, a Republican-priority measure to protect children from sexually explicit books in public schools finally advanced in the Texas House.
Senate Bill 13 by State Sen. Angela Paxton (R–McKinney) aims to strengthen legislation passed last session, known as the READER Act, that was meant to keep adult content out of kids’ school libraries.
Advocates call SB 13 “a vital fix” to the READER Act, which isn’t working as intended due to legal challenges, unclear definitions, and a lack of enforcement.
“Texas families are asking for help—and lawmakers need to respond. If we meant what we said with The READER Act, we must be willing to fix it,” wrote State Republican Executive Committeewoman Christin Bentley, who leads the party’s legislative efforts to Stop Sexualizing Texas Kids.
SB 13 is a priority of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the Texas GOP.
The bill received a Senate committee hearing on February 27, during which several parents confirmed Paxton’s assertion that sexually explicit content in school libraries is still a problem.
SB 13 passed the Senate on March 19. All 20 Republican senators co-authored the bill, and three Democrat senators joined Republicans in voting for its final passage.
On Tuesday, SB 13 finally received a hearing in the House Public Education Committee.
The committee chairman, State Rep. Brad Buckley (R–Salado), presented Paxton’s bill.
The measure—which the Senate passed last session but the House did not—would:
- Prohibit school libraries from containing “profane” or “indecent” content. “Indecent” is the Federal Communications Commission standard for content aired between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. that has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
- Create district-level library advisory councils with at least five parents, educators, and local community members appointed by school boards. Councils would make recommendations regarding book purchases; school boards would make final decisions after allowing a 30-day public review of the materials.
- Allow any district resident or employee to submit book challenges, which must be acted on within 90 days. Books would be removed from circulation during reviews.
- Require parental access to school libraries, library catalogs, and their children’s library checkout records, and allow parents to submit a list of school library materials their children cannot check out.
Parent advocates testifying in favor of the bill noted that SB 13 improves on current laws but still leaves gaps—most notably, no penalties or enforcement.
“I am enthusiastically in favor of this bill,” testified Bonnie Wallace, a Central Texas mom and well-known statewide advocate for clean libraries.
Wallace read profane, sexually explicit excerpts from “Dead End,” a book available in multiple Texas school libraries but banned in state prisons, and shared printed copies of other examples with committee members.
“These are the books that the librarians, that are so educated, are buying for our children,” Wallace told committee members. “Every one of those books has been challenged, and every one has been found suitable for our children.”
Wallace said the READER Act is not working because it doesn’t have an effective enforcement mechanism for schools that fail to remove sexually explicit content.
Instead, she said school boards are afraid of being sued if they do remove books.
“Nobody knows what to do,” she testified. “Everywhere I go, they ask for legislation. ‘Give us legislation that we know that we can take the books out.’”
Wallace noted that the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) “protects these books” by advising school boards to adopt policies that exclude non-parent district taxpayers from filing challenges and keep challenged books on library shelves during reviews.
State Rep. Alan Schoolcraft (R–McQueeney) said that looking at the book excerpts Wallace provided, “it’s hard to believe that this is actually true.”
He asked if Wallace could provide more examples.
“Yes, sir. I’ve got 971,” she replied. “I have searched probably a thousand libraries. Not one clean library have I found. I have not found one library that didn’t have this content from at least two or three of those books that I gave you.”
Laura Giles, a mom in Lovejoy Independent School District, told the committee that the current book challenge system “seems to be designed to make parents give up.”
Giles is the only parent to follow the entire book reconsideration process all the way to the Texas Education Agency since the passage of the READER Act. TEA sent the case back to the school district.
“Parents should not have to spend two years to file over 40 reconsiderations, with another 100 yet to be filed, when it is already illegal for districts to be in possession of these books,” testified Giles. “But because there are no penalties and no enforcement mechanisms for not complying with the law, here we are again.”
“I’m so grateful that SB 13 uses FCC regulation definitions to strengthen the law,” testified North Texas mom Diana Richards on behalf of parent advocacy group Texas Education 911. “Thankfully, it also adds more transparency and access for parents.”
Richards provided members with book QR codes “that take you to evidence proving the necessity of SB 13.”
Since at least 2019, the Texas Legislature has been aware of sexually explicit materials in schools. I’ve supplied evidence showing that the American Library Association and Texas Library Association have promoted these books to schools. And I sent the Pub Ed Committee eight years’ worth of “recommended reading” lists to prove that books like “What Girls Are Made Of”—which is in your packet—were marketed to schools as fabulous works of literature when it contains play-by-play descriptions of explicit sex acts, starting in the first chapter and running through the entire book.
Richards added that SB 13 needs enforcement mechanisms, “or we’ll be right back here next session after two more years of children being harmed by explicit, vulgar and indecent, profane content.”
Shannon Ayres, education director for conservative advocacy group Citizens Defending Freedom-Texas, agreed that SB 13 needs enforcement mechanisms and said the bill makes enforcement feasible by incorporating court-tested standards for indecent and profane material.
“Districts across Texas are disregarding current standards and making it increasingly difficult for concerned citizens to challenge objectionable content,” Ayres told the committee.
Without the passage of SB 13 this session, we face another two years of districts shutting out taxpayers who fund these libraries from the ability to challenge books in their local schools; another two years of administrators evading accountability, hiding behind the decisions of secret reconsideration committees; another two years of parents enduring prolonged processes, filing challenges and multiple appeals that can take 18 months or longer.
Ayres noted that recently passed legislation to repeal legal defenses for schools that provide harmful material to minors applies only to “hardcore porn, not explicit materials.”
Some librarians complained that SB 13 would undermine the authority of trained experts by deferring to recommendations made by parents and community members—even though the final decisions rest with elected school board trustees.
Several opponents of SB 13, including “transgender” advocates and activist librarians, told the committee they feared non-explicit books would get “swept up” by challenges and wrongly removed by school boards following the advice of “untrained” library councils.
One witness called SB 13 an “insult” to school librarians.
“How can we allow amateurs to second-guess qualified librarians?” she asked the committee, referring to parents who would make up a majority of the library review councils.
“For very good reason, based on what we’ve seen in some libraries,” responded Buckley.
Other opponents testified that SB 13 would hurt children’s reading scores and literacy.
Paxton addressed that criticism during the Senate committee hearing on the bill, stating, “I think we can all agree that learning to read doesn’t require sexually explicit material.”
While some Democrats on the committee suggested that “we all can agree” on “extreme examples” of explicit materials found in school libraries, Buckley noted that “The books we say ‘we can all agree on’ are still on the shelves.”
SB 13 was left pending in committee.
Time is running short for bills to complete the legislative process before the regular session ends on June 2.
