Censorship concerns rise over Texas bill; Abilene bookstore pushes back | Hacker News Reader

Censorship concerns rise over Texas bill; Abilene bookstore pushes back

bigcountryhomepage.com

68 pointshn_acker48 comments

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

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.

> 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.

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

So the opponents to "common sense gun legislation" have a point?

Absolutely. Same playbook.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

> Censorship concerns rise over Texas bill; Abilene bookstore pushes back

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.

> 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."

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)

It's not entirely clear, but the bill may try to extend liability to the first sale (or even earlier) also in cases where this sale wasn't to a minor (however a minor gained access subsequently). That would be quite different from existing law, wouldn't it?

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

Absolutely. Circumscribing liability in civil actions is one of the fundamental purposes of commercial legal structures; to wit, the two L's in "LLC" stand for "Limited Liability".

The basic principle of limited liability has been deeply embedded in the USA's system of free commerce since its founding. Historically, there has always been a high bar for exceptions to this general principle. I think that should still be the case.

I have two reasons for this.

The first is selfish. The legal exposure risked by an hourly employee working at a bookstore would be far too great to justify the wages earned. The lines of "obscenity" are blurry enough that the risk to any employee would be substantial.

If the business chose to indemnify their employees and owners -- which they likely would need to do in order to employ anyone -- then that indemnification would be part of a larger legal insurance policy.

I do not own a book store, but I do own a large stake in a business. I carry a legal insurance policy (actually, two). These bookstores are probably part of the same risk pool that I'm buying into. Which means that if some random Karen is angry that a character in a book had two moms, my insurance premiums get to pay for that bullshit.

The second reason is more principled. The intent of the proposed exception is to establish a statutory framework that would allow conservative religious groups to use civil courts to harass their ideological enemies. I do not find common cause with that purpose, because I do not believe in bullying people into silence via the State's courts, because I am a proud American.

BTW: if the employee's actions are criminal, then the state can already prosecute that individual employee. Allowing private civil actions is extraneous, unless the ultimate goal is coercive or political. Weaponizing our system of commerce to wage culture wars was a bad idea when the intolerant left was doing it a decade ago, it was a bad idea when the intolerant evangelical right was doing in two decades ago, and it is a bad idea now that the new right is doing it.

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?

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.

It also creates a private right of action. That is completely different than the existing laws, which are enforceable by a state. The author of this bill knows it will chill the selling of anything that is remotely close to the line and that is the entire point.

You are missing the point.

Including more potential targets for a lawsuit because a bad definition of harmful doesn’t make it better

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.

In my personal experience, people usually use "you have the right to say it, but not the right to be free from the consequences of saying it" when referring to non-government responses to speech. It is a less rigorous offshoot of the concept "the First Amendment only applies to government restrictions to speech".

> 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.

That's not all it is, because you're ignoring the First Amendment. The consequences must fit the action, and proving third-party liability for speech (that is, liability for distributing the speech of others) requires overcoming a high First Amendment standard. I believe that the correct standard in this case is strict scrutiny because the broadly written bill's private right of action will chill bookstores from selling books that parents think are harmful to minors even though bookstores can sell both books that are safe for minors and those that aren't. Read my reply to OP at [1]. I also doubt that the bill would pass intermediate scrutiny, particularly the "further an important government interest" prong, because there is already a law criminalizing sale of harmful materials to minors [2]. The existing law better aligns with the First Amendment because criminal prosecutions have significantly less DDOSing potential and because the existing law has the following safeguard [2]:

> 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 might conflict with the safeguard because of [3]:

> Sec. 98C.005. PROHIBITED DEFENSES. It is not a defense to liability under this chapter that the defendant:

> (1) has been acquitted or has not been prosecuted or convicted under Subchapter B, Chapter 43, Penal Code;

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43882169

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

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

then simply age-restrict the content? like any porn site does. this is a nothingburger.

> then simply age-restrict the content? like any porn site does.

Porn sites generally age restrict their content voluntarily in the United States. There are constitutional ways to enforce age restrictions on websites by law (such as requiring an RTA label as mentioned by Bender [1][2], with a private right of action in only limited cases), while age verification likely is unconstitutional [3]. Anyway, we're talking about bookstores that don't chiefly cater adult-only books.

> then simply age-restrict the content? like any porn site does. this is a nothingburger.

It's not a nothingburger if any parent claiming harm can sue and if people can turn questionable book bans on school libraries into book sale lawsuits on bookstores. So what is a concrete way for a bookstore to "simply age-restrict the content" in a way that will prevent lawsuits and allow the law to pass strict scrutiny (which has a "least restrictive means" prong [4])? When I said that a criminal law has "significantly less DDOSing potential", I meant that (even lone) frivolous lawsuits can impose a massive burden on legal speech, like in the case of SLAPP suits [5].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43784936

[2] https://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq#single

[3] https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2025/04/why-i-emphatic...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny#Applicability

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

I think your viewpoint lacks awareness of diverse groups that may be sensitive to certain types of content. If you distribute works that disrupt the mind of a child, this bill allows parents to seek relief. I think that's a good thing. You can still peddle the offensive material but require ID to view it.

> I think your viewpoint lacks awareness of diverse groups that may be sensitive to certain types of content.

We might be in partial agreement on this point. Consider the parents in Iowa who think that books with LGBTQ+ themes fit a law about `sex acts` [1]. (The problem was twofold: the Iowa law was so broadly written as to include nonsexual aspects of heteronormative and LGBTQ+ themes, and parents tended to target only the books about LGBTQ+ themes.)

> If you distribute works that disrupt the mind of a child, this bill allows parents to seek relief. I think that's a good thing.

I was arguing that this bill, which both is broadly written and allows a private right of action, is a bad thing because it will encourage frivolous lawsuits over books that minors should be able to access. In some cases, kids will want to read such books against the wishes of their parents (though a parent would be able to prevent their children from reading forbidden in the bookstore by being present). Anyone writing a law around the concept of books that "disrupt the mind of a child" will have a difficult time satisfying strict scrutiny.

> You can still peddle the offensive material but require ID to view it.

Thanks. This solution could be constitutional with a more narrowly written bill and a restricted private right of action. By restricted, I mean that the mere act of selling a harmful book should not be sufficient to establish harm in most cases; unless the book contains something comparable to porn, the plaintiff's initial filings should include evidence that their child exhibited abnormal behavior or noticeable suffering after reading part of the book.

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

What or who defines obscene?

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

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.

And I disagree with those laws as well, since, quite famously, the Supreme Court could only come up with subjective rules around what pornography even is.

Quoted: I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…

In other words, it is entirely subject to the judge whether something is porn or not.

It is famously hard to define, so the outcome is that to avoid liability you must err on the side of censorship, and not free speech. Given that Texas has used civil liability laws in incredibly bad faith around abortions, I am not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe it causes some readers to feel unsafe?

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.

> 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:

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...

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.

> 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.

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.

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...

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