September 23, 2024
Publishers, Authors, Booksellers and Libraries File Supreme Court Amicus Brief in Support of First Amendment Rights in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton
On September 23, 2024, the Association of American Publishers, along with the American Booksellers for Free Expression, Authors Guild, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Freedom to Read Foundation, and Independent Book Publishers Association filed an amicus brief supporting the Free Speech Coalition in the Supreme Court case Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton.
The brief argues that Texas law HB 1181, which requires age-verification on websites where over one-third of the content is considered “harmful to minors,” violates the First Amendment because it will impede access by adults and older minors to constitutionally protected materials, including contemporary fiction, literary classics, young adult fiction, and health books.
The brief also argues that the Fifth Circuit’s failure to apply strict scrutiny amounted to a radical departure from decades of legal precedent.
Highlights from the brief include:
- “[T]he mode of analysis presented by the Fifth Circuit, if sustained, would have far-reaching implications for bookstores, libraries, publishers, authors and mainstream websites such as Amici.”
- “This ‘harmful to minors’ material [under HB 1181] encompasses contemporary fiction, literary classics, young adult fiction, and health books, and given the breadth of the variable age categories, is significant in number, including many prize-winning and important works that of course are constitutionally protected as to older minors and adults.”
- “The Fifth Circuit in this case radically deviated from the case law of this Court, at least four other Circuits and at least one state’s highest court, which have consistently held that when a content-based restriction on adults arises collaterally in connection with restrictions on access by minors to sexually frank material, constitutionality would be determined based on a strict scrutiny test.”
- “Through the years, states have attempted to ban access to and the availability of harmful to minors materials to minors in physical bookstores and libraries…Over the past 40 years, courts have consistently held such statutes to be unconstitutional restrictions.”
The full brief can be found here.