AUSTIN, Texas — Governor Abbott signed a bill into law Friday that restructures how school districts are allowed to purchase or keep books for their libraries, vesting power instead with school boards or an advisory committee.

Senate Bill 13 was one of the 1,155 bills signed into law across this year’s legislative session, including many just ahead of this past weekend’s deadline.

It’s concerning for Austin I.S.D. Parent Kevin Jackson, who says he’s always encouraged his two daughters to read.

“It’s like a journey, it’s like an adventure reading a book,” Jackson said. “They just get to see, you know, different perspectives of what’s going on in American history and world history, and just different viewpoints.”

Now, both in high school, he calls Senate Bill 13 an attack on his right as a parent to monitor what his daughters are reading.

“I’ll ask my daughters, like, okay, you’re interested in this book. And we can, like, talk about it and everything like that.” Jackson said.

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Signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott on Friday, S.B. 13 gives school boards the final say on what books are allowed in the libraries instead of their librarians.

Senator Angela Paxton authored the bill. She was unavailable for comment, but on the floor in March, she called this bill another way to protect community values and young children.

“No child should pick up a book in their school library of all places and see sexually explicit, harmful material within its pages,” Paxton said. “Their young brains cannot unsee what they’ve seen.”

The law also gives the Board a mechanism to review parent complaints. Laney Hawes with the Texas Freedom to Read Project says the logistical nightmare aside…

“There are school districts in the state of Texas that are buying tens and tens of thousands of books a year, right?” Hawes said. “So no, we can’t reasonably expect a group of five or six people to review all of those books. It’s not possible.”

She says librarians should be making these decisions. Not political actors.

“Librarians have master’s degrees, right? And librarians are very specifically under a code of ethics where they don’t make curatorial decisions based on what they like or don’t like.” Hawes said. “We find that line to be devastating and terrifying, right? That a small group of people will decide what local community values look like.”

Jackson is concerned the law will do more harm than good.

“I hope this doesn’t prevent, you know, students, especially like in middle school and high school, to prevent them from reading books that they wouldn’t normally be able to,” Jackson said.