AUSTIN, Texas — Although legislators have flipped the page and moved on to the second special session, the CEO of BookPeople can't help but stress about the impacts of House Bill 900, which was passed during the regular 88th legislative session.
Under the law, vendors who sell books to schools will have to decide which books are sexually appropriate for students.
BookPeople, the largest independent bookstore in Texas, is in Downtown Austin. Despite having a large staff, CEO Charley Rejsek said they don't have the manpower to make this happen.
Rejsek said her team will have to read and rate the sexual content of thousands of books in order to continue selling to Texas public schools, thanks to the new "Reader Act."
"I just don't see a clear path forward on how to comply," Rejsek said.
HB 900 will require all public or charter school book vendors to determine and label books sold to schools as "sexually explicit" or sexually relevant material. The list will have to be updated annually.
"There's no prerequisite to be a bookseller; there's no training or certification," Rejsek said. "So they're kind of putting the onus on vendors to decide what students can have access to in schools, and it just doesn't feel like it's the right way to go."
The Texas State Library and Archives Commission and the Texas Education Agency (TEA) have until Jan. 1, 2024, to create the guidelines for vendors to follow. Then, those businesses have just four months – until April 1, 2024 – to submit a comprehensive list to the TEA or be barred from selling books to schools.
It's a deadline Rejsek knows she can't make.
"I don't know how to pay people to read thousands of books in a four-month period," Rejsek said.
The list also has to include books sold to schools in the past – something BookPeople has not tracked because it wasn't a requirement.
Many Central Texas districts already have ways to remove sexually explicit books off the shelves.
State Rep. Jarred Patterson (R-Frisco), who sponsored the bill, said this will make sure sexuality explicit content is out of school libraries.
In a new statement, Patterson wrote, "I don't care if you're a small business or a big business; if you're selling something that's going to be in the hands of children, you should know whether or not it's safe for that child to consume. The book vendor is the one with the financial relationship with the school district, so they're the ones that can most easily be held accountable for this."
"I think that if this rating system has to happen, then I think it has to be determined at the local level with the parents and the communities that it affects," Rejsek said.
She said it's going to hurt vendors around the state, as well as children.
"It's going to hurt the students because they're not going to have access to books," Rejsek said.
She fears big companies like Amazon will be the only ones with the manpower to determine what books are clean enough to go in school libraries.