Among them was House Bill 900, which will prohibit public schools from purchasing or displaying books that are “sexually explicit” and “educationally unsuitable.”
Deemed the "Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources Act," the bill will create a new rating system for books and other material sold to schools. Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, and Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, sponsored the proposal during the regular legislative session.
HB 900 is part of Abbott’s effort to “empower” parents by giving them more control over what, and how, their kids learn.
“Parents deserve to know what books are in school libraries,” Abbott said as he signed the bill. “Some school libraries have books with sexually explicit and vulgar materials. I’m signing a law that gets that trash out of our schools.”
The bill directs the Texas State Library and Archives Commission to create new standards for all school library content by Jan. 1. The standards will then be approved by the State Board of Education and updated every five years.
Book vendors will then be required to assign ratings to the materials they sell to libraries. Before children can check out books rated “sexually explicit” or “sexually relevant,” their parents must sign a consent form.
The bill states that schools cannot remove books solely because of the “ideas contained in the material” or the background of the author and characters.
School districts will have to review their library materials every odd-numbered year.
Opponents of the legislation have expressed concerns that it will ban books focused on LGBTQ+ topics.
“HB 900 restricts our children’s ability to read freely by allowing politicians to interfere with our education system when parents already have a system that works to control what their children read in our schools,” said Val Benavidez, executive director of the Texas Freedom Network, in a statement.
During the signing ceremony, Abbott said the bill is meant to restrict “disturbingly graphic” content in schools.
“It's the kind of graphic image that no one would publicize, and yet we have books like that in our schools that are allowing children to see it,” he explained. “That’s wrong.”
According to the free-speech nonprofit PEN America, 438 books were banned across Texas from July-December 2022, which is more than any other state.
The other bills signed during the ceremony include:
- House Bill 1605: overhauling the evaluation process for Texas’ instructional materials and allowing parents to access all materials online
- House Bill 1926: expanding access to a grant used by parents to purchase special education resources, such as tutoring and therapy
- House Bill 3803: giving parents a say in whether their children should repeat a grade or course instead of moving on
