Trump-appointed judge rejects Texas Republican's book-banning bill: report

Texas state Rep. James Talarico said that the Republican bill to ban books in the state has been blocked by a conservative judge.

The judge, Alan Albright, was appointed to the federal bench by then-President Donald Trump in 2018.

Albright called the bill an “unconstitutional law” that “could lead to banning classic works of literature.”

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The state has already said that they will appeal. They also asked the judge to allow the law to go into effect pending appeal. It was denied.

"The Reader Act would have required any book vendor that does business with a Texas school district to rank every book that's ever been sold by the vendor based on sexual content," said the Houston Chronicle. "Two independent bookstores, Houston's Blue Willow Bookshop and Austin’s BookPeople, as well as a coalition of professional publishing organizations, sued the state over the law, arguing that not only was it unconstitutional, but also that it created an undue burden on private businesses, was unenforceable, and was too broadly written."

The move came as Harris County Commissioners voted unanimously to approve a resolution for the Public Library system to become a Book Sanctuary. There is now a network of 2,828 book sanctuaries across the United States, reported the Houston Chronicle.