Censorship concerns rise over Texas bill; Abilene bookstore pushes back

https://www.bigcountryhomepage.com/news/censorship-concerns-rise-over-texas-bill-abilene-bookstore-pushes-back/

by hn_acker • 1 year ago

68 38 1 year ago

bigcountryhomepage.com

hn_acker6• 1 year ago

For clarity, I added "book" to the title, which original is:

Censorship concerns rise over Texas bill; Abilene bookstore pushes back

jmclnx• 1 year ago

Cannot get into the link and neither can the Wayback Machine :(

Here you go:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/censorship-concerns-rise-over-tex...

Looks like banning books in school is not enough, now they want to ban the sale of some books.

heavyset_go• 1 year ago

Looks like banning books in school is not enough, now they want to ban the sale of some books.

The irony, and insincerity, in this is ripe because book ban proponents would scream that they weren't "book bans" because they only wanted to ban books at school and not elsewhere.

Turns out they want to ban books everywhere, just like their critics said.

ryandrake2• 1 year ago

Standard prohibitionist playbook: Get your foot in the door by at first claiming an agreeable, limited scope, and then slowly expand to universal prohibition.

thatfrenchguy• 1 year ago

Conservatives have always been like this, talking about small government while wanting a nanny state controlling what you can do and read

codeddesign4• 1 year ago

It drives me crazy when people make argument like this without pointing to the actual legislation.

https://legiscan.com/TX/bill/HB1375/2025

After reading the bill, I don’t see the argument.

The bill is around expanding the current laws involving directly selling or distributing media to minors where not only the business but also the employee would be held responsible.

aiforecastthway2• 1 year ago

It drives me crazy when people make argument like this without pointing to the actual legislation.

The first sentence of the article reads "A bill set to be heard by the Judiciary and Jurisprudence Committee at the Texas House is sparking criticism from small business owners across the state. ".

The text "Judiciary and Jurisprudence Committee" is a hyperlink. That hyperlink takes you to the bill tracker.

After reading the bill, I don’t see the argument.

Introducing civil liability has a chilling effect on commerce (and, therefore, speech). From the article:

"The biggest concern that we have is that for small businesses, first of all, we can’t afford the lawsuits."

codeddesign4• 1 year ago

Again…I don’t see the argument. There are already laws at federal and state levels..in every state.

Are you saying that while a company would be responsible (current laws), an employee should not because of free speech?? (proposed law)

ooterness• 1 year ago

The bill used an incredibly over-broad definition of "harmful material". Then it makes the bookstore and its employees liable if a child ever accesses allegedly harmful material. (Even if it's sold to someone else, and the child accesses it later.)

You don't see the incredibly obvious problems with this?

codeddesign4• 1 year ago

I think you may be missing the point here. There is already laws in the books at the federal and state levels. The law in question defines who is responsible based upon current laws.

gosub1004• 1 year ago

Whatever happened to the refrain "you have the right to say it, but not the right to be free from the consequences of saying it". That's all this is.

dghlsakjg2• 1 year ago

What or who defines obscene?

This is the WHOLE point of the right to free speech.

codeddesign4• 1 year ago

The would be a combination of congress and state legislation. You can’t distribute porn to minors for example..try in any state and see what happens.

Regardless, this bill isn’t around speech, it’s who is responsible based upon current laws.

gosub1004• 1 year ago

Maybe it causes some readers to feel unsafe?

o11c• 1 year ago

First-party link:

https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/html/HB01375I...

And the definitions reference:

https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/docs/pe/htm/pe.43.htm

Note that the definitions each include some variant of "completely lacks value". In particular, the article's "look at these banned books" is an outright fraudulent claim.

hn_acker6• 1 year ago

Note that the definitions each include some variant of "completely lacks value".

In the section "Sale, Distribution, Or Display Of Harmful Material To Minor" (originally all caps) is the prong "is utterly without redeeming social value for minors." Some parents in Iowa think that books with LGBTQ+ themes fit a law about `sex acts` [1]. I think the same parents would find such books with LGBTQ+ themes "without redeeming social value for minors", and a subset would sue bookstores for selling such books if a law would let them.

In particular, the article's "look at these banned books" is an outright fraudulent claim.

You should be careful when using the word "fraudulent", because the bookstore owner in TFA mentioned The Bluest Eye, The Color Purple, and Slaughterhouse Five, which are each banned from school libraries in at least one Texas district [2]. Broadly written and with a private right of action, the bill will inevitably result in frivolous lawsuits analogous to SLAPP suits [3]. Less centrally, the penal code you linked [4] has a safeguard:

It is an affirmative defense to prosecution under this section that the sale, distribution, or exhibition was by a person having scientific, educational, governmental, or other similar justification.

The new bill allowing civil lawsuits might conflict with the safeguard because of [5]:

Sec. 98C.005. PROHIBITED DEFENSES. It is not a defense to liability under this chapter that the defendant:
has been acquitted or has not been prosecuted or convicted under Subchapter B, Chapter 43, Penal Code;

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/01/04/iowas-new-book-ban-anti-...

[2] https://pen.org/book-bans/pen-america-index-of-school-book-b...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...

[4] https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/docs/pe/htm/pe.43.htm

[5] https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/html/HB01375I...

jyounker• 1 year ago

I've looked at the text and I find it pretty scary.

This laws is being created for a reason, and that reason is for things like preventing teens from accessing books about human reproduction, or the existence of gay people.

The idea is clearly to make it so scary for everyone employed in book stores that such things just get pulled from stock everywhere.

croes2• 1 year ago

Harmful material” means material whose dominant theme taken as a whole:

(A) appeals to the prurient interest of a minor, in sex, nudity, or excretion;

(B) is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable for minors; and

B and C are pretty broad.

Hizonner• 1 year ago

You are reading it wrong. In fact you're reading it so wrong that I don't see how you even get there. In fact I suspect that you are deliberately lying, in the hope of tricking people who don't have the time to go read it themselves.

What it does is to allow private civil suits for things that are presently only criminal. Yes, it applies that to employees as well as the businesses themselves, but that's minor. In fact the criminal statute probably already applies to employees. I didn't go look it up because it's not actually important anyway.

Allowing private actions has the following effects:

1. It allows any random whackjob to bring lawsuits, in a forum where the bookseller has to pay their own legal costs. There are no public defenders in civil suits. There are plenty of rich random whackjobs in Texas who'd be happy to bring losing cases, but keep the proceedings running until legal bills had bankrupted this or that bookstore. In legal harassment, whoever has the most money wins. Independent bookstores aren't rolling in money. It doesn't matter if you're in the right if you're forced into bankruptcy proving it.

And the real beauty of it is that it creates a climate of fear, so after the whackjobs have made a few examples of random bookstores, they won't have to keep on outspending people. Stores in general will just stay within whatever boundaries the whackjobs choose to set. Which may be well short of the actual legal boundaries.

2. It lowers the standard of proof from "beyond a reasonable doubt" to "preponderance of the evidence". And the way the legal system interprets "preponderance" creates a far lower threshold than what a normal person would get out of the word. Basically it means that a 51 percent probability is enough. Especially bad because there's a quite significant chance that you can get a jury to see a 51 percent probability where the correct probability, based on a fair reading of the actual evidence, is way less.

3. It makes it hard to stop the legal harassment. If the state keeps bringing meritless cases, the state can be enjoined to stop. If random individuals keep bringing meritless cases, they have to be shut down one at a time. There's no standing to enjoin everybody from doing so. And the threshold to shut down even one of them is very high. And if whackjob A has been shut down, they can still fund whackjob B to go off and bring bullshit suits. This is an application of the Texas "deputize private citizens" hack that they invented for abortion. It may be less pernicious here, but it's still bad.

This is all explained at the top of the linked article. Did you not read that? It's also obvious to anybody with even a tiny bit of political or legal sophistication.

... and let's not forget that the whole underlying concept of "harm to minors" is straight up idiotic to begin with.

hn_acker6• 1 year ago

From the bill [1]:

Sec. 98C.003. COMMERCIAL ENTITY LIABILITY. A commercial entity is liable, as provided by this chapter, to a person harmed for damages arising from the distribution, transmission, or display of harmful material to a minor if, knowing the character and content of the material, the entity knowingly or intentionally benefits from participating in the distribution, transmission, or display of harmful material to a minor by facilitating, aiding, encouraging, or contributing to the distribution, transmission, or display in a manner that:
(1) is readily accessible to minors; or
(2) includes a minor's visual image, audio voice, or participation in any manner.

The parts that concern me the most are, when stitched together:

`A commercial entity is liable if the entity knowingly benefits from display of harmful material to a minor by contributing to the display in a manner that is readily accessible to minors.`

This bill creates a private right of action, allowing anyone who claims that the bookstore `displayed` a harmful book to their child to sue. Consider what books parents think are harmful to minors according to bans imposed on school libraries [2], and what parents think `knowingly benefits from display of that is readily accessible to minors` means. Now consider making regular libraries and bookstores liable for what books parents think are harmful to minors. If passed, such a broadly written bill would violate the First Amendment by inevitably chilling bookstores from `displaying` books like (mentioned in the article) The Bluest Eye, The Color Purple, and Slaughterhouse Five (which are each banned from school libraries in at least one Texas district).

[1] https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/html/HB01375I...

[2] https://pen.org/book-bans/pen-america-index-of-school-book-b...

flufluflufluffy• 1 year ago

Ah yes, the same people calling others snowflakes saying their children are going to be “harmed” by a book

BurningFrog• 1 year ago

Note that this is a bill from a single legislator that no one else is known to support.

With only one author and no co-sponsors so far, Goodwin doubts it will even reach the House floor.

olyjohn• 1 year ago

That means it she perfect time to throw it back in that legislators face before it goes any further. You can't just ignore these non-starter bills. They will just try tweak it every year until it passes.

sdenton4• 1 year ago

Meanwhile the free speech absolutists at the top of the federal government are ctrl-f deleting anything containing words they don't like...

pascoej• 1 year ago

Growing up, my school couldn't afford paper for math worksheets while building the most expensive high school football stadium. There are definitely some priorities in Texas.

sabslikesobs• 1 year ago

I observe that the letter of the law intends to severely restrict pornographic materials from being made available to minors: see "harmful content" [1] and obscenity [2] definitions for the state of Texas.

Realistically however, fringe content and the risk of misinterpretations of the law place a huge burden on the distributors of any kind of media, where they could be at risk for a suit at any time.

This seems to point towards the need for age-checks at the book store, just to quash all possiblities---which is absurd since community-sourced content like tiktok is already so much worse for them, and that's not half as restricted!

[1] https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/penal-code/penal-sect-43-24/

[2] https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/docs/pe/htm/pe.43.htm

Censorship concerns rise over Texas bill; Abilene bookstore pushes back

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