Book People, Inc., et al. v. Morath, et al.

Texas’s Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources Act, or READER, requires booksellers that sell to school libraries to rate books as “sexually explicit,” “sexually relevant,” or neither, and bars public schools from buying materials labeled “sexually explicit.” In doing so, READER forces booksellers to choose between parroting the government’s preferred views under vague standards or risking economic harm. READER forces booksellers to determine whether books offend the community’s standards of decency, but READER offers no guidance on what those standards mean. 

Under its ambiguous requirements, READER might cause booksellers to label books like To Kill a Mockingbird and the dictionary as “sexually relevant,” just to avoid ending up on Texas’s blacklist. Worse yet, READER gives state officials leeway to impose their own values and purge works they don’t like. 

All of this violates the First Amendment.

A collection of bookstores and book-related associations sued to stop READER’s enforcement. The trial court preliminarily enjoined READER, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. FIRE, joined by the Cato Institute and the National Coalition Against Censorship, filed an amicus brief supporting that result.

On remand, the trial court entered a permanent injunction against READER. FIRE and the Cato Institute have now filed FIRE’s second amicus brief in the case, urging the Fifth Circuit to affirm. The brief argues that READER violates the Amendments on its face, by coercing booksellers to speak the state’s preferred message under threat of economic pain, and under vague standards that fail to give fair notice and give officials unconstitutional power to distort the marketplace of ideas. Joshua J. Bennett of Baker Hostetler co-authored both amicus briefs.