Texas Legislative Session Wrap-Up Report 2025
This session, Texans faced bills that created vouchers for private schools, made it easier to ban books in schools, and attempted to take away the freedom to read in public libraries. Read the full report now!
By Sanobar Wilkins, Democracy Projects Coordinator, EveryLibrary in coordination and collaboration with Texas Freedom to Read Project
The Highlights
As we predicted in January, the 89th Texas Legislative Session proved to be a challenging one. This session, Texans faced bills that created vouchers for private schools, made it easier to ban books in schools, and attempted to take away the freedom to read in public libraries. Despite strong opposition from the public, the Texas Senate and House managed to pass some harmful legislation that will impact school libraries across the state.
This includes SB 13, which establishes optional school library advisory councils comprised of politically appointed volunteers who will be tasked with oversight of school library book purchases and book challenges for an entire school district. Working in coalition with Texas parents, students, authors, librarians, and other library advocates, we were able to raise awareness about legislation that impacted libraries across the state.
A Breakdown of the Bills
Criminalizing Librarians
SB 412 - Criminalizing librarians, educators, psychiatrists, psychologists, and mental health providers.
- Status: PASSED (signed by Governor on 5/19/2025)
Effective on September 1, 2025, this law will change the Texas Penal Code to remove defenses to prosecution for certain offenses involving material or conduct that is obscene or otherwise harmful to children for bona fide educational, medical, psychological, psychiatric, judicial, law enforcement, or legislative purposes. Meaning, these professions could be subject to criminal penalties for doing their jobs. For example, librarians could be held criminally responsible for including certain books in their collection.
Simply put, librarians and educators aren’t sharing obscene and harmful material with minors. Not a single banned or challenged book available to minors in Texas libraries has been deemed legally obscene or harmful to minors. But in his letter of intent, SB 412 author Senator Mayes Middleton falsely claimed school libraries were allowing (and giving access to) obscene content in Texas schools.
Unfortunately, we believe this bill will be used to target and frighten educators and librarians. The chilling effect it will have on educators and librarians across the state is the primary feature of this bill.
Book Banning in Schools
SB12 - Relating to parental rights in public education, to certain public school requirements and prohibitions regarding instruction, diversity, equity, and inclusion duties, and social transitioning, and to student clubs at public schools.
- Status: PASSED (sent to Governor on 6/3/2025)
While it is not the intent of bills like this to always ban books, they often result in increased censorship. The provision against "instruction, guidance, activities, or programming on gender identity or sexual orientation" will likely be used to remove library books, especially since they took out the provision that exempted "the display or provision of literature or other material that is unrelated to the course or subject being taught.” SB 12 also creates concerns about some book displays and celebrations in school libraries.
SB 13 - Creating School Library Advisory Councils that can determine which books students can access in school libraries.
- Status: PASSED (sent to Governor on 6/3/2025)
As amended, this law will allow for the creation of a politically appointed School Library Advisory Council for school districts “if the parents of at least 10 percent of the students enrolled in the district or 50 or more parents of students enrolled in the district, whichever is fewer, present to the board a petition to establish a local school library advisory council.” These councils are tasked with advising which books should be included in school libraries at the district level. SB 13 claims to protect “local community values” through the use of vague and broad definitions for terms like “profane,” and “indecent.”. Notably, it will allow a small minority of community members to remove books they simply disagree with or deem inconsistent with local community values by upending long-established challenge policies that protect the freedom to read.
The vague and confusing bill places the onus of navigating the maze of new, arduous steps and broad, subjective definitions on already underfunded and overwhelmed educators and librarians.
The legislative session was extremely damaging for all Texans. In fact, many of Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick’s harmful priorities were passed, including voucher bills that will threaten public education, additional restrictions on school library books, and attacks on DEI and LGBTQ+ communities. Despite this, we managed to delay the passage of any laws that would restrict the freedom to read in public libraries.
Not All Bad News…
HB 3225 - Would have restricted minors’ access to certain materials in public libraries.
- Status: FAILED (The session ended before the Senate could pass this harmful bill.)
This bill would have violated the First Amendment rights of children and teens to access books in the general collections of municipal public libraries across the state. In an attempt to protect children from sexually explicit materials, the bill would have actually caused harm to teens seeking health information, classic works of literature, and artwork by preventing them from accessing books vaguely defined as “sexually explicit.” If it had passed, the bill would have created a system that would have locked certain books in restricted sections, required librarians to check IDs at the door, or even banned minors from the library altogether.
Its failure was not an accident. Rather, it was a concerted effort based on strategic conversations aimed at protecting parental rights and empowering local government control. We could not have prevented HB 3225 from passing without support from our coalition of library advocates, parents, and students in Texas.
HB 1375 - Relating to civil liability for obscenity.
- Status: FAILED (The session ended before the Senate could pass this harmful bill.)
Under this bill, news broadcasters, other information providers, and commercial entities would face civil penalties for providing vaguely defined “harmful material” to minors. While not explicitly mentioned in the text, the bill would have financially harmed booksellers for providing certain books to minors. After pushback from small businesses, including local bookstores, the bill failed to pass.
HB 183 - Relating to the regulation and the review of certain library materials included in public school libraries.
- Status: FAILED
Despite another attempt by Representative Patterson to attack school libraries, HB 183 did not get heard by the Texas House Public Education Committee. Reminiscent of Utah’s HB 29, the bill would have allowed the State Board of Education to develop a statewide list of prohibited library materials, taking away local control from parents and school boards.
The Fight Isn't Over
Although the legislative session has concluded, our work is not yet complete. We continue to fight for the freedom to read at the local level by supporting parents and community members. School libraries continue to face attacks at the district level in the form of self-censorship, fear of compliance with state laws and regulations, and outside political actors attempting to ban books. While the public library bill did not pass this session, we know the fight isn’t over.
Donate to Support Our Work
Texas Freedom to Read Project is volunteer run. Laney, Frank, and Anne are real Texas parents, with real commitments to our families and our jobs. We volunteer countless hours fighting to defend the freedom to read in our very large state. There are real expenses associated with keeping this grassroots project running. If you value what we do, please consider supporting our work with your dollars. We are a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, so donations are tax-deductible.
CLICK TO DONATE