In the last year, Texas has enacted multiple laws to protect children from harmful and sexually explicit material. However, parents and concerned citizens say there is still more work to be done.
One of the Republican Party of Texas’ legislative priorities for the upcoming session is to stop the sexualization of Texas children.
Online
During the 88th Legislative Session, lawmakers passed House Bill 1181, which requires commercial porn websites to use “reasonable methods to verify that users are at least 18 years of age before they can access X-rated content online.” Violators face a $10,000 fine per day.
Pornhub—the largest online platform for sharing sex videos—had, along with other pro-porn plaintiffs, sued Texas to keep HB 1181 from taking effect, claiming the law violates the First Amendment and porn users’ privacy. A federal district judge sided with porn industry plaintiffs and issued a preliminary injunction against enforcing the law.
Texas appealed, and Fifth Circuit judges ruled last November that Texas could enforce the law pending appeal, lifting the preliminary injunction.
In March, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Texas in upholding the law’s age-verification requirement as constitutional. As a result, Pornhub decided to shut down its site entirely in Texas instead of requiring age verification for its users.
The plaintiffs appealed the ruling, and Texas is scheduled to argue the case before the U.S. Supreme Court on January 15, 2025.
Children’s Libraries
Texas’ government schools contain sexually explicit books that are available to young children. While a law was enacted to end the availability of explicit books to children, citizens are facing difficulty getting their school districts to enforce the law.
The law in question is HB 900, also known as the READER (Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources) Act. It passed the legislature in 2023 and required vendors to rate books sold to Texas schools based on their sexual content. The law was immediately challenged and the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the plaintiffs—made up of different book vendors and publishers—saying they are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the book-rating regulation violates their First Amendment rights.
However, the court did not block a section of HB 900 that required the development of new school library collection development standards.
The Texas State Library Archives Commission developed new standards with input from the State Board of Education in compliance with HB 900 and adopted new school library standards designed to protect students from sexually explicit content.
As a result, some school districts, under pressure from grassroots activists, have removed hundreds of inappropriate books from libraries to review their contents.
Meanwhile, other districts are keeping these books on the shelves.
Additional legislation has been filed for the upcoming legislative session to further state influence over the matter by requiring the State Board of Education to review and make determinations on books challenged by parents and community members.
Performances
Another recently enacted measure is Senate Bill 12, which would prohibit sexually-oriented performances in front of minors. However, after Gov. Greg Abbott signed the measure into law, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas sued the state to halt it from taking effect.
U.S. District Judge David Hittner ruled in favor of the ACLU and granted a permanent injunction against enforcing the new law, preventing violators from being subjected to fines of up to $10,000 per offense.
Attorney General Ken Paxton has since appealed the case to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and submitted a motion to stay the injunction. However, the appellate court has not yet ruled on the case.
Additional Work
Texas Family Project President Brady Gray told Texas Scorecard that he is looking forward to working with the legislature to protect Texas children.
“Despite the legislature‘s efforts, drag shows in front of children are still legal in Texas and pornographic books are still on many of our school library shelves. We must end the vile drag performances in the presence of minors and ban pornographic books in children’s libraries for good. Additionally, it is past time that parents have the power to choose how their children are educated,” said Gray.
“The legislature must act in putting forth quality school choice legislation this session. We look forward to working with the legislature on all of these and a number of other issues to help Texas families in 2025 and beyond,” added Gray.