This week, the Attorney General’s office for the state of Texas observed Banned Books Week by taking my deposition in Book People et al. v. Morath, the case in which the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and other plaintiffs are challenging the constitutionality of the state’s new book ratings law.
So far our case has been successful – the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s preliminary injunction, which blocks enforcement of the ratings system for the time being – but now we’re back in court to determine whether the ratings requirement will be permanently enjoined.
Document production, interrogatories, and depositions are all behind-the-scenes parts of the trial process before witnesses take the stand. For reasons I hope you’ll understand, for the moment I will not go into details of what all these have entailed in the weeks since San Diego Comic-Con, but I will say that it was rather poignant to be questioned on graphic novel ratings during Banned Books Week and the 70th anniversary of Comics Code.
If the deposition becomes publicly accessible, I’ll post it on cbldf.org. In the meantime, I’ll be following up here and in a member email with more details on this and other cases!
Photo: EC publisher Bill Gaines testifying in the U.S. Senate Hearings on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954.