(Daily Signal)—A Texas conservative activist is suing the Houston Independent School District after the school board removed her from a meeting for reading sexually explicit passages from a book available in the district’s school libraries.
Bonnie Wallace, who lives in the Texas Hill Country, has attended multiple school board meetings to show trustees that books containing sexually explicit material are available in their school libraries and should be removed.
During a March 2026 Houston ISD school board meeting, Wallace addressed the board during public comment and said she would be reading from a book currently available to students in the district.
Wallace began reading verbatim from “A Court of Silver Flames,” a Sarah J. Maas fantasy romance novel filled with sexually explicit content. Trustees issued multiple warnings as she continued reading the book.
Trustees Remove Wallace From Meeting
After Wallace continued reading despite warnings from trustees, three police officers escorted her from the meeting.
“[Trustee Angela Lemond Flowers] said you can’t read anything inappropriate,” Wallace told the Daily Signal.
During the exchange, which was posted on X, Lemond Flowers can be heard telling Wallace that she was “not allowed to read things that are not appropriate.”
Wallace responded, “Then why are they in your schools?”
What’s Inside the Book
“A Court of Silver Flames” is described as an adult fantasy romance novel and is the fifth book in the “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series. The book is widely known for being significantly more sexually explicit and descriptive than previous installments in the series.
In excerpts from the book that Wallace shared with the Daily Signal, one passage contains a highly explicit sexual scene with detailed descriptions of physical intimacy.
The book also contains violence, descriptions of battle gore, and explorations of depression, self-loathing, and past abuse.
‘It Had to Be Done’: Wallace Sues Houston ISD
After the incident, Wallace said multiple attorneys told her she had grounds to sue Houston ISD, the largest school district in Texas. She said they also warned that failing to challenge the district’s actions could encourage other school districts to take similar action.
Wallace was initially hesitant to file a lawsuit, but said she “finally was convinced by people who know more than I do that it had to be done because of the implications if it’s allowed to stand.”
“I was not being disruptive,” Wallace added.
Wallace, with her attorneys Martin K. Etwop and Jonathan K. Hullihan of Remnant Law, filed a lawsuit against Houston ISD in April alleging violations of her First Amendment rights. The lawsuit, shared with the Daily Signal, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division.
Lawsuit Centers on First Amendment Rights
Wallace’s lawsuit alleges that Houston ISD violated her First Amendment rights by stopping her from speaking and removing her from the meeting.
“This was textbook viewpoint discrimination: HISD silenced Ms. Wallace precisely because she demonstrated the hypocrisy of its own policies, proving that if the content was too explicit for adults, it was too explicit for children. Such conduct is ‘an egregious form’ of content regulation that the First Amendment almost never tolerates,” the lawsuit states.
After Wallace filed suit, Houston ISD moved to dismiss the case, arguing that she relies on the wrong First Amendment framework.
“The public-comment portion of a school board meeting is undeniably a limited public forum. It is well established that in such forums, governmental bodies may adopt reasonable, viewpoint-neutral rules governing participation and may reserve the forum for its intended purposes,” reads the district’s motion obtained by the Daily Signal.
“Under her own allegations—as well as the plain record of the meeting that Plaintiff incorporates into her claims—this case does not concern a general prohibition on speech content, but instead only the presiding officer’s administration of a well-established, content-neutral guideline on limited public forum presentations during a single HISD board meeting,” the motion adds.
Wallace told the Daily Signal the district’s argument demonstrates its hypocrisy.
“They state in there [the motion to dismiss] that they had to remove me because I was reading sexually and inappropriate content, and they wanted to protect the children,” Wallace said.
“First of all, there were no children in the school board meeting—I did make an announcement before I started speaking,” Wallace continued, “but their whole position is that they had to remove me because I was reading sexually explicit content and they needed to protect the children.”
“My reply to that is, ‘Wow, you want to protect the children at the school board meetings of HISD, but not in the campus libraries of HISD?’” she added.
Wallace Believes Recent Supreme Court Ruling Helps Her Case
Just one month before Wallace filed suit, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Chiles v. Salazar, which stated that a person may not be removed simply because their speech makes you uncomfortable.
Wallace said the ruling strengthened her position.
“That was so important,” Wallace said of the court’s decision. “When I’m reading books that are highly inappropriate, they’re very shocked, and then they don’t know what to do.”
Wallace also told the Daily Signal she has found more than 2,100 books she believes to be inappropriate in libraries across Texas school districts. She claims that Houston ISD carries nearly all of those books.
Texas Law Restricts Sexually Explicit School Library Material
Gov. Greg Abbott’s press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, told the Daily Signal that Abbott expects school districts to follow state law.
“Sexually explicit material has no place in Texas public school libraries. Governor Abbott was proud to sign laws that require its removal,” Mahaleris said. “The Governor expects every school district to follow state law.”
In 2023, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 900, also known as the READER Act. The law established standards for school library collection development and created requirements concerning sexually explicit and sexually relevant library materials. It also requires schools to recognize parents as the primary decision-makers regarding a student’s access to library materials and encourages catalog transparency.
Abbott signed the legislation in June 2023, and it took effect Sept. 1, 2023.
“Parents deserve to know what books are in school libraries. I’m signing a law that gets inappropriate or vulgar materials out of our schools,” Abbott said during the signing.
Education Advocates Weigh In
Education advocates also weighed in on Wallace’s lawsuit.
Corey DeAngelis, a research fellow for the Center for Education Policy at The Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Signal that what happened to Wallace was outrageous but predictable.
“Houston ISD removed a parent from a public meeting for reading aloud from a sexually explicit book that the district itself has placed in school libraries including those accessible to elementary, middle, and high school students,” DeAngelis said. “The school board doesn’t want the public to hear the material they’re giving kids. That tells you everything you need to know about their priorities.”
DeAngelis said one solution is to hold school board members accountable through elections.
“States should require school board elections to be held on the same day as the general election. Special-interest groups—especially the teachers unions—dominate low-turnout, off-cycle elections. Aligning them with higher-turnout general elections gives parents a much better chance of winning,” he said.
Mandy Drogin, senior fellow for the Government Reform & Oversight Coalition at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, also commented on the lawsuit.
“This is the M.O. of the education cartel [is] to shut down any dissent that does not go along with their radical progressive ideology, which includes desensitizing children to highly pornographic, explicit content,” said Drogin. “They are intentionally putting it in libraries.”
Drogin said there should be consequences for school leaders who allow such books to remain in libraries.
“The reality is, until we see severe consequences for putting this smut into our kids’ schools and classrooms, they’re going to keep doing it,” Drogin said. “There should probably be a full audit of all of the books that are in our libraries being put forth to our kids, and it all needs to be removed.”
“If it’s not removed, there should be consequences for the adults that are allowing it to be in there,” she added.
Wallace’s case is scheduled for trial Sept. 13, 2027, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division.
Houston ISD did not respond to a request for comment by publication.
