‘It could very well bankrupt us,’ says bookseller suing over Texas school book ban | CBC Radio

Valerie Koehler says she might go out of business if her book shop is forced to comply with a new state law regulating public school literature.

That’s because the law will require vendors to evaluate every book they sell, or have sold, to schools for sexually explicit content. Sellers that don’t comply would be barred from doing business with schools.

Koehler, owner of the Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, says that amounts to roughly 20 per cent of her sales.

“Certainly, as a bookseller and as a reader — a big reader — it does bother me a lot that we might have to judge books,” Koehler told As It Happens guest host Robyn Bresnahan.

“But as a business owner, it is incredibly difficult to imagine how much time … and money it will cost us to do this. It could very well bankrupt us.”

Koehler has joined a coalition of booksellers, authors and publishers challenging the Texas law, which was passed by the Republican-controlled legislature in May and is set to take effect in September.

Other plaintiffs in the case include the store BookPeople in Austin, the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, says the Texas legislation violates the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights to free expression and equal protection, calling it “an overbroad and vague content-based law that targets protected speech and is not narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest.”

The Texas Board of Education, a defendant in the suit, did not respond to a request for comment from the CBC. State Rep. Jared Patterson, one of the Republican authors of the bill, said he’s been expecting the lawsuit but believes the law will be upheld in court.

“I fully recognize the far left will do anything to maintain their ability to sexualize our children,” Patterson told The Associated Press.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has said the Texas law protects children, declaring that it “gets that trash out of our schools” when he signed it in June.

What is sexually explicit content?

The lawsuit takes aim at House Bill 900, one of several recent U.S. Republican measures to restrict minors’ access to literature.

It calls on booksellers to evaluate books that have been, or will be, sold to schools, for “sexually explicit” or “sexually relevant” content.

According to the text of the bill, a “sexually relevant” book describes or portrays sex, but is part of the required school curriculum. Under the law, these books could be checked out of a school library with a parent’s permission.

But books that are deemed “sexually explicit” — non-curriculum material that portrays sexual acts — will be removed from school shelves.

If the Texas Board of Education decides it doesn’t agree with a vendor’s rating, it can change it without providing an explanation.

Koehler says the bill doesn’t provide any specific guidance on what constitutes inappropriate material. 

“The idea of having to read every single book for an unknown content is mind-boggling at best. We are a small bookstore,” she said.

“We don’t read every single book that we bring into the store, and we certainly don’t read every single book that is requested by a school or a school library. We fulfil their orders. We don’t judge them. We don’t read them. We just sell them the books.”

Charley Rejsek, CEO of BookPeople, says it’s not vendors’ jobs to decide what kids should and shouldn’t read.

“Booksellers should not be put in the position of broadly determining what best serves all Texan communities,” Rejsek, said in a press release.

“Each community is individual and has different needs. Setting local guidelines is not the government’s job either. It is the local librarian’s and teacher’s job.”

Classics, LGBTQ books could be on the chopping block

The lawsuit says the vagueness of the bill could put classic literature in the crosshairs, including William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and even the Bible.

“A lot of books that people aren’t thinking about that are really well-written, have great content, have relevancy to teenagers and young preteens, I think they’ll leave the shelves and we’re going to be left with very little,” Koehler said.

WATCH | Author speaks out against book bans: 

Author Gordon Korman on the banning of some books in North America

Gordon Korman has written 100 books since he published his first novel in the mid-1970s — but not every book stays on store shelves for long. He explains why he “hurts” for the kids deprived of those stories and other banned books.

Free speech advocates have also noted that book censorship laws around the U.S. have largely been used to target books with racial or LGBTQ characters or themes. 

According to the American Library Association, 2022 saw a new record for attempted book bans and restrictions in the U.S., with the vast majority of complaints directed at works about race, gender or sexual orientation.

Koehler says she fears joining this lawsuit could make her and her store a target for those who agree with the law.

But she says it’s a risk worth taking.

“I’ve been doing this long enough, and I’ve talked with my team here, and we all feel very strongly about this complaint, about this lawsuit. We feel very strongly that we need to take a stand,” she said.

“We all want to be here in two years, and we don’t want this law to be the thing that puts us out of business.”

With files from Reuters and The Associated Press. Interview with Valerie Koehler produced by Sarah Jackson