Banning books

More than 10,000 books are banned inside Texas prisons.

The American Civil Liberties Union and several other organizations filed briefs Tuesday in an ongoing lawsuit over books removed from the Llano County library.

Texas Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, made the request to Attorney General Ken Paxton after the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked enforcement of H.B. 900, which would require booksellers to rate books sold to schools.

A teacher at a public school near Houston has a secret classroom bookshelf largely made up of challenged titles. Many of the books deal with race, sex and gender.

A federal judge in Austin temporarily blocked a new state law restricting which books are available in school libraries. The state then appealed. But whether or not the law is upheld, efforts to censor what students can read have intensified in Texas.

Are parents, teachers and the public feeling as divided as the headlines make it seem? A pair of new NPR/Ipsos polls reveals division, to be sure, but also surprising consensus.

The federal judge’s order requires the library system to update its online catalog to reflect the 17 books are available for checkout, and it prohibits officials from removing any more books.

Llano County commissioners considered whether they should shut down its library system entirely instead of complying with a federal judge's ruling that they must return 17 banned books to the library system.

LLano County Commissioners are set to vote on Thursday to shut down it's library system in order to avoid obeying a federal judge's order to return banned books to the shelves. This is just one of many attacks on public libraries happening across Texas and the nation.

The books under review were previously challenged and placed back on shelves, but now the Keller Independent School District wants them to undergo another review with new criteria.