A school district in the Texas panhandle temporarily removed the Bible – and reinstated it soon after – in an effort to comply with a controversial new state law that bans sexually explicit materials in schools.
House Bill 900 – also called the Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designated Educational Resources (Reader) Act – took effect in September 2023 and requires library vendors to rate materials for explicit content, inform parents of potentially explicit books and recall materials already in circulation when required. More broadly, the law requires library content to align with state educational standards.
While the bill, sponsored by Representative Jared Patterson, was intended to shield students from obscene content, critics say it could restrict their constitutional freedoms, and the bill has faced legal challenges since before its implementation.
Citing HB900, the full text of the Bible was temporarily banned from Canyon independent school district, which serves 11,000 students across 21 schools in Amarillo and Canyon counties.
In a leaked email with unknown date and recipients, Superintendent Darryl Flusche said that HB900 “doesn’t allow numerous books, including the full text of the Bible, to be available in the school library”. Flusche said students should connect with local churches to receive Bibles and encouraged parents to raise concerns about HB900 with local legislators.
Some parents and elected officials protested the removal of the religious text. In a 9 December school board meeting, Canyon ISD parent Regina Kiehne said: “It seems absurd to me that the Good Book was thrown out with the bad books.”
“It just makes sense to have the Word of God in our school library,” she continued. “After all, it is the book of wisdom. It is the bestselling book of all time; it is historically accurate, scientifically sound, and most importantly, life-changing.”
State senator Kevin Sparks called the district’s Bible ban “misguided” in a 19 December post on Instagram. “The Bible is not educationally unsuitable, sexually explicit, or pervasively vulgar, making its removal legally and morally indefensible. At a time when students seek guidance, the Bible provides a vital moral framework.”
The district reinstated the Bible soon thereafter, as it announced in a statement on 19 December: “Following the passage of House Bill 900, Canyon ISD conducted a comprehensive review of library materials to ensure compliance with updated state guidelines. After receiving clarification from Representative Patterson regarding library content, we reevaluated the guidelines and are pleased to have the Bible available in each of our Canyon ISD libraries.”
The incident in Canyon demonstrates a general push by the conservative right to increase parental control over school curriculum, which has often been met with legal challenges.
While the state adopted library standards inclusive of HB900 last December, the fifth circuit has since blocked the part of the law requiring vendors to rate materials. Most of the rest of the law remains intact.
HB900 is being challenged in the US district court for the western district of Texas by bookshops in Houston and Austin, the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which have collectively filed suit against Texas school board and library officials.
The complaint says the “overbroad language of the Book Ban could result in the banning or restricting of access to many classic works of literature, such as ‘Twelfth Night,’ ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ … ‘The Canterbury Tales,’ ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,’ and even the Bible.”
The complaint argues that HB900 “harkens back to dark days in our nation’s history when the government served as licensors and dictated the public dissemination of information”.
