Texas Senate approves bill changing how schools select library books

The Texas Senate passed a bill Wednesday that would give parents more power over which books their children can read in public school libraries.

The measure was approved Wednesday by a 23-8 vote. Introduced last month by Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, Senate Bill 13 would represent an overhaul of how schools decide what books are placed in their libraries. The bill now heads to the Texas House.

SB 13 would require that school boards, rather than librarians, have the final say over which new books or materials can be put in school libraries. The bill would also create a way for parents to challenge any library book and have it removed from shelves until the school board decides whether that material is allowed.

Under SB 13, each school district would also be required to have local advisory councils — with parents of students in the district making up a majority of voting members — that would recommend which books should be added and removed from school libraries. Additionally, the bill would not allow schools to have library materials that have “indecent content or profane content,” which can include books that use “grossly offensive” language.

During a committee hearing last month, Paxton characterized the bill as a way to address parents’ concerns about sexually explicit content in Texas’ public school libraries. She added the legislation “clarifies parental rights with respect to school libraries.” It comes as the Senate is also considering a proposal that would amend the state constitution to enshrine parents’ right to direct their child’s education.

“No child should pick up a book in their school library of all places and be exposed to inappropriate, harmful material within its pages,” Paxton said. “These young brains cannot unsee what they see.”

A similar proposal passed the Senate but didn’t get a vote on the House floor last session.

The bill would build on House Bill 900, a law passed in 2023 to keep sexually explicit content off of bookshelves. Last year, a federal appeals court blocked Texas from enforcing parts of the law that required book vendors to assign ratings to books based on the presence of or depictions of sex, saying it was unconstitutionally broad. Since then, Texas conservatives have increased their push for new legislation. This session, SB 13 is one of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s legislative priorities.

But the proposal has also drawn harsh criticism from school librarians and anti-censorship advocates, who say it would make it easier for school districts to target and remove books about people of color and involving LGBTQ+ characters.

The measure comes as book bans have increased in Texas and nationwide in recent years. Texas banned around 540 books during the 2023-24 school year, according to PEN America, an organization tracking bans throughout the country. Of all the books banned during that time, 44% included characters or people of color and 39% included LGBTQ+ characters. Some of the book titles banned in Texas school districts in 2023 included “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” “The Kite Runner,” “The Color Purple” and “The Handmaid’s Tale,” among other acclaimed books, according to PEN America data.

“Our communities are diverse and that’s the power and beauty of the communities to have so many different experiences available for our students to learn from,” Lucy Podmore, a public school librarian and former chair of the Texas Association of School Librarians, told The Texas Tribune last month. “It’s imperative that when we say ‘parents’ and ‘parental choice’ and ‘parents are the final say’ that we include all parents — that we’re not just giving voice to a select few.”

The library bill also raises some logistical concerns. In requiring school boards to approve each new library material, a responsibility traditionally overseen by school librarians, the bill’s proposed process would make it more difficult for libraries to obtain new books in a timely manner, librarians say. As a result, critics add, the bill could lead to school-aged children reading less, even as Texas students are still recovering academically from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shirley Robinson, executive director of the Texas Library Association, said it’s “critically important” for libraries throughout the state to either maintain or increase the number of books available to students given the lagging reading scores. But the Senate proposal, she said, would create new obstacles toward achieving that — and potentially hamper spending on school library books in the long term.

“Budgets are based on what the spending was the prior year,” Robinson said. “So if we are essentially putting roadblocks and barriers up for those campus library budgets to be spent, they’re going to continue to be reduced further and further every single year.”

The local advisory councils created under the bill would recommend removing library materials that have “indecent content or profane content.” According to the bill, these councils would also make recommendations to ensure “that local community values are reflected” in public school libraries in their districts.

Education advocates say it’s unclear what the phrase “local community values” is supposed to mean. For Emily Witt, an author at the progressive-leaning Texas Freedom Network, it’s an open question about which community values are being upheld. The answer to that question, she said, may vary depending on the makeup of a given community and result in majority voices having an outsized opinion over what materials are available for all students to choose to read.

“Parents do have the right to control the education of their children, absolutely, but I think that creating laws like this and stoking fear in parents puts out the message that it’s not okay for their kids to learn about people who are different from them,” Witt said. “I think that does a disservice to parents as well.”

Texas isn’t alone in its efforts to further regulate school libraries statewide. More than 3,400 books have been banned in Iowa school libraries since 2023, a Des Moines Register survey found, after the state passed a law meant to ban books depicting sex acts from school.

And in 2023, Florida put in place a policy allowing parents to challenge books in school libraries or classrooms that they say depict sexual conduct. During the 2023-24 school year, Florida led the nation in book bans with more than 4,500, according to PEN America.

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said these efforts are being driven by advocacy groups that want many books on topics like race, history, sexual orientation and gender identity out of school libraries and out of reach for children. The result, she said, has been increased censorship in schools and public libraries nationwide.

“A library is really designed to be a place where you should be able to find a wide range of ideas that serve a variety of information needs that reflect the views and opinions of a wide range of people in the community,” Caldwell-Stone said. “Everyone should be able to find something on the shelf that reflects their experience, their identity and their beliefs — and we’re seeing that attacked as a concept.”

SB 13 is expected to swiftly pass the Senate. All 20 Republican senators sponsored the proposal. A date for the vote hasn’t been set yet.