Texas
In a Blistering Opinion, Judge Officially Blocks Texas’ Book Rating Law
After nearly three weeks of waiting, federal judge Alan D. Albright delivered a major victory for freedom to read advocates, issuing a substantive 59-page written opinion and order officially blocking Texas’s controversial book rating law, HB 900, from taking effect. The decision comes after Albright orally enjoined the law at an August 31 hearing and signaled his intent to block the law in its entirety.
Signed by Texas governor Greg Abbott on June 12, HB 900 would have required book vendors to review and rate books for sexual content under a vaguely articulated standard as a condition of doing business with Texas public schools. Under the law, books rated “sexually explicit” (if the book includes material deemed “patently offensive” by unspecified community standards) would be banned from Texas schools. Books rated “sexually relevant” (books with any representation of sexual conduct) would have required written parental permission for students to access them. Furthermore, the law would have given the state the ultimate power to change the rating on any book, and would have forced vendors to accept the state’s designated rating as their own, or be barred from selling to Texas public schools.
In suing to block the law, the plaintiffs (two Texas bookstores—Austin’s BookPeople and Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop—together with the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund—argued that the law is blatantly unconstitutional, and would impose an untenable burden on vendors and publishers. After two hearings held in August, Albright agreed in an opinion handed down September 18.
“The Court does not dispute that the state has a strong interest in what children are able to learn and access in schools. And the Court surely agrees that children should be protected from obscene content in the school setting,” Albright concluded. “That said, [the law] misses the mark on obscenity with a web of unconstitutionally vague requirements. And the state, in abdicating its responsibility to protect children, forces private individuals and corporations into compliance with an unconstitutional law that violates the First Amendment.”
In defending the law, Texas attorneys had argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the law, and that the state has the right to regulate vendors who wish to do business with Texas public schools—essentially asserting that rating books would simply the cost of doing business in Texas. Albright demolished those arguments in his opinion and harshly criticized the ill-conceived law.
At one point, Albright observed that the burden placed on vendors by the law are “so numerous and onerous as to call into question whether the legislature believed any third party could possibly comply.” And he called out state attorneys for their inability to answer basic questions over the course of two hearings. “Generally, the government was confused and unaware of how the law would actually function in practice,” Albright observed, citing “approximately 40 instances during the August 18th hearing (‘Hearing 1’) where the government either did not know how the law would function or did not have an answer as to what the effects of certain provisions were.”
Like many critics of the law, Albright was highly critical of the state’s attempt to outsource book ratings to private vendors (under impermissibly vague standards, and at a considerable, non-recoupable cost) while retaining the unchecked power to change a book’s rating and force vendors to adopt it as their own—effectively imposing a state standard. Albright called this a “textbook” example of compelled speech.
“Here, the government has failed to articulate any legitimate reason for requiring the vendors speak at all,” Albright concluded. “The government has the power to do the contextual ratings for the books itself. The government has the power to restrict the ability of its school district as to which books it may purchase. The exercise of these powers must, of course, comply with the requirements of the constitution, but these are powers that should be exercised by the state directly. Not by compelling third parties to perform it or risk losing any opportunity to engage in commerce with the school districts.”
Meanwhile, despite initially saying he would enjoin the law “in its entirety,” at press time it remains unclear whether the judge will allow a part of the law to take effect—specifically, a provision that requires state agencies to develop voluntary standards for “school library services” by January 1, 2024.
In a September 1 motion, the state argued that the provision should be allowed to take effect because it does not directly impact the plaintiffs. But at a September 11 conference (and in a filing last week), the plaintiffs insisted the judge should follow through and block the law in its entirety, arguing that allowing the state to develop new standards within the scope of this law would result in “unconstitutional definitions and unconstitutional procedures.” A status conference is set for this afternoon, September 19.
The ruling in Texas—delivered by a Trump-appointed judge—is the most high-profile victory yet in a slew of lawsuits pushing back on new state laws that take aim at the freedom to read under the guise of “parental rights.”
On July 29, a federal judge in Arkansas blocked two key provisions of a recently passed Arkansas law, known as Act 372, that would have exposed librarians and booksellers to criminal liability for making allegedly inappropriate or “harmful” books accessible to minors in the state.
Suits are also pending in Missouri, challenging Senate Bill 775, a school library obscenity law that opponents say forces librarians to censor their collections under the “threat of arbitrary enforcement of imprisonment or fines.” And in May, PEN America and Penguin Random House joined forces with a group of authors and parents to sue school administrators in Escambia County, Fla, over the removal of allegedly inappropriate books from school libraries.
State officials in Texas have already filed notice that they will appeal.
In a joint statement, the plaintiffs praised the decision. “We thank the court for its clear and decisive ruling and applaud its finding that this law violates the First Amendment, imposes impossibly onerous conditions on booksellers, and ignores the vastly different community standards across local communities,” the statement reads. “Today is a great day for Texas booksellers, publishers, readers, and communities.”
Strong winds and humid conditions will make for an unusually warm Sunday in North Texas.
High temperatures are expected to reach 80 degrees in some areas, which is about 15 degrees above normal for this time of year. This warm weather will make for a balmy atmosphere for the Parade of Lights in downtown Fort Worth tonight, starting at 6 p.m.
However, the warm stretch won’t last. A cold front is expected to hit Monday morning.
Morning temperatures on Monday will start near what is typically a daytime high, similar to today. But as the cold front moves in, gusty winds from the north will cause temperatures to drop to the upper 50s by late afternoon – the first of two cold fronts expected this week.
So far, November has been remarkably warm, currently ranking as the fifth warmest on record from 1899 to the present. However, it won’t end that way.
The cold front arriving on Thanksgiving will drop temperatures down enough to require winter coats.
North Texas is anticipating a widespread freeze by Friday morning, with the Dallas-Fort Worth area forecasted to stay just above freezing during what is expected to be the coldest morning of the season. A First Alert Weather Day has been issued in preparation for the cold weather.
My Aggie loyalty started in high school, when my future alma mater mailed a poster of Bonfire to a ZIP code at the very top of Texas. That was about all the recruiting I received from Aggieland, but it was enough. That poster hung on my wall (between Michael Jordan and a Porsche) and I memorized the only words on it:
Some may boast of prowess bold,
of the school they think so grand.
But there’s a spirit can ne’er be told.
It’s the Spirit of Aggieland.
My enrollment at what was then the third-largest university in the nation was a sea change for me, and a culture shock. It’s when I stitched the High Plains together with the rest of Texas and started to get perspective about the history, personalities and traditions that shape our state. One of those traditions will be renewed Saturday when maroon and burnt orange take the field together, for the first time in 13 years, below the roar of the 12th Man.
This rivalry started in 1894, and was renewed 97 consecutive times from 1915 to 2011. Altogether, the game has been played 118 times. It used to unite the state, and it used to divide families. In recent years, jokes about tension over Thanksgiving dinner because of the A&M-UT game have been replaced by dread of Thanksgiving dinner over political talk. With the election behind us, it’ll be good for Texans to get back to the old ways.
This rivalry has created our state’s own version of mixed marriages. Kevin Scheible, one of my closest friends from college, married a member of the Longhorn Band. Kevin and Sharon live in San Antonio now. They’ve somehow made it work, though it’s an arrangement I would counsel most young lovers to avoid.
A dozen years ago, right around the time the rivalry was being suspended, my Aggie wife and I found ourselves in a Bible study group that was evenly split between Aggies and Longhorns. It included two mixed marriages. Those people are still some of our closest friends. Only the supernatural bonds of the Holy Spirit could have kept us from cracking in half. That, plus we don’t watch the game together.
College football has changed enormously since this game was played last, let alone since it was played first. The crowds are larger. The record size of the 12th Man is 110,663; this game will almost certainly surpass that.
The payouts are bigger too. The era of Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) sponsorships has created a breed that would have been unthinkable in 1894: millionaire college athletes.
Two of the 10 highest paid college athletes in the nation are Longhorn quarterbacks Quinn Ewers and Arch Manning, according to Yahoo! Sports.
In the new Aggie tradition of paying football personalities not to contribute, benched quarterback Conner Weigman will earn his $628,000 NIL valuation from the sideline.
But at least the venue will be simple. The Aggies play at Kyle Field, the state’s largest stadium, named after Texas A&M horticulture professor E.J. Kyle, who created the school’s football field in 1904.
In contrast, the name of the Longhorns’ haunt is something like Campbell-Williams Field at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium presented by Bud Light in association with Hemp-It-Up-America Political Action Committee.
Both schools have storied programs. The Longhorns have Darrell Royal, Earl Campbell, Ricky Williams and four national championships if you include the one in 1970 when they lost to Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl but United Press International writers awarded them the title anyway because the media loves them. Some things never change.
The Aggies have Bear Bryant, Gene Stallings and Jackie Sherrill (for the purposes of this column, please forget the state of Alabama exists), as well as Heisman Trophy winners John David Crow and Johnny Football Manziel. When I was a student, Aggies claimed just one national championship, back in 1939. But then other schools started putting such achievements in big letters on their stadiums and we demanded a recount. Now, Aggies include the undefeated seasons in 1919 and 1927 under Coach D.X. Bible who later coached at, you guessed it, UT.
The rivalry has included its share of pranks. The official story (and by “official” I mean made up by Aggies) of how UT mascot Bevo got its name is that a group of Aggie students snuck over to Austin one night, long ago, after the horns had lost to A&M 13-0, and branded the cow with the score. In a mascot cover-up, UT students converted the 13 to a B, the – to an E and added a V before the 0 to create the name.
It is true that A&M beat UT 13-0 in 1915, and it’s true that some Aggies branded the mascot. But the brand-conversion part remains unconfirmed and Longhorns refuse to admit the obvious: that this is a terrific story that should live long in Texas lore.
For all the differences between these schools, there is still more that unites us than divides us, as it’s popular to say these days. Both institutions are doing important work in research and molding the next generation of Texas leaders. Aggies and Longhorns love their state. We love our schools. And we would love to see our rivals lose. Both school’s songs mention the other.
That poster on my bedroom wall would be as close as I would come to the real Bonfire until I stood on Duncan Drill Field watching it burn in the fall of 1991. My unit in the Corps of Cadets was known for building Bonfire. We had spent thousands of man hours in exhausting manual labor kindling Bonfire’s purpose: the burning desire to beat the hell outta UT.
I remember watching the news just a few years later, heartbroken by the loss of 12 Aggies who were making their own Bonfire memories when tragedy struck. Aggies everywhere remembered them this week.
Longhorns did too. I’ll never forget how Austin dropped the rivalry taunts and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with grieving Aggies in the wake of that tragedy. UT showed its class that year. The school canceled its Hex Rally, the ritual that traditionally preceded the game. The UT Tower went dark and the Aggie War Hymn was played there — the one that derides the “orange and the white.” It’s the only time in UT history that has happened, I’m told. At the game, the Longhorn Band played Taps, a fitting salute at a school with military roots.
Longhorn coach Mack Brown offered to postpone the game and he said he has shed tears over the loss of those 12 Aggies. His staff organized a blood drive. Brown was a great coach whose players would have run through a wall for him. In November 1999, I think a lot of Aggies would have too.
Two weeks ago, Mrs. Aggie and I attended a gathering sponsored by the Coppell Aggie Moms Club where we got to meet the Texana artist Benjamin Knox. Knox was in the Aggie Cadet Corps just a few years before I was. He went on to paint the school spirit at several Texas institutions, including commissions by the State of Texas, and the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum.
Knox showed us a new painting he created to mark the revival of this Texas Thanksgiving tradition. And because I accosted him after the meeting, he agreed to let The Dallas Morning News reproduce it here.
From a folded poster hung with thumbtacks to a work of art by one of Texas’ great painters, this rivalry has produced a lot of memorable images. If the Aggies don’t run out of time, I look forward to treasuring the image of the Kyle Field scoreboard Saturday, and sharing it with a few of my Longhorn friends.
Editor’s note: Over Sanders’ loud objections, this column was edited for a variety of blatant biases and subtle but consistent grammatical slights (such as the use of “tu”) that did not meet our editorial standards.
We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here. If you have problems with the form, you can submit via email at letters@dallasnews.com
A common theme for No. 22 TCU has been their complete dominance on their home floor this season. The Horned Frogs finished the year 14-1 at Schollmaier Arena. On Friday night, in front of over 3,000 fans, TCU swept Texas Tech (25-14, 26-24, 25-11).
The four seniors honored by TCU were Melanie Parra, Cecily Bramschreiber, Stephanie Young and Ashlyn Bourland. All four players found ways to contribute as Parra finished with 14 kills and seven digs. Bramschreiber filled up the stat sheet with four kills, four aces and seven digs. Both Young and Bourland got an ace.
Both teams traded points in the early going, but Bramschreiber sparked a 7-2 run to give the Frogs a 16-9 lead. TCU hit .417 in the first set and dominated the first set capped off by a Becca Kelley ace.
In set two, Texas Tech made things much closer jumping out to a 8-5 lead. A 4-0 run from TCU put them back in front. This set included multiple runs and it was Tech that got it to set point leading 24-22. TCU was able to end the set on a 4-0 run courtesy of kills from Jalyn Gibson and Parra paired with aces from Bramschreiber.
Trying to keeps things alive, TCU wasn’t met with much resistance from the Red Raiders in the third set. The Frogs kept up the pressure with multiple runs to build a massive 17-8 lead. Bourland picked up her first career ace and an attack error ended things.
It was a fun night for the seniors that played in front of the TCU crowd for the last time. The 14 wins at home tied the school record for most wins at home in a single season. They also picked up the most wins in a season since 2015. What Jason Williams has done for this program in such a short time has been remarkable to watch.
The Frogs move to 19-7 overall 11-5 in conference. They still are fifth in the Big 12 standings with two games to go. They will travel to Morgantown on Wednesday to take on West Virginia at 6 p.m. and then to Cincinnati on Friday at 1 p.m.
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