Texas is the worst in the nation for quality of life, mental health care access, insurance, and food insecurity — and we’ve seen a 63% increase in gun deaths since Gov. Greg Abbott took office. But it’d be absurd for our elected officials to consider action on those issues, so instead, newly-elected state Rep. Hillary Hickland, from Temple, has filed a bill banning sex toys from pharmacies and drugstores.
The lawmaker filed HB 1549 this week ahead of the 2025 Texas Legislative session, where it would be lucky to face the gauntlet of committee hearings, both chambers, and a trip to the governor’s desk. If approved, starting September 1, 2025, the sale of “obscene devices” would be banned anywhere that is not a sexually oriented business. According to Chron.com, retail stores like Target, Walmart, and CVS would have to stop selling sex toys — or face legal action. For a group so apparently opposed to the use of pleasure devices, Texas Republicans certainly talk about them a lot.
The local outlet reported that Hickland called the bill “an important safeguard for Texas families,” adding that “parents do not consent to their children being exposed to obscene devices while shopping for toothpaste.” (To be clear, sex toys are in the family planning and reproductive care aisle, not the oral healthcare aisle.)
Given that Texas lawmakers are so good at prioritizing what their constituents actually need, this is not the first time they’ve targeted sexual health and wellness. (Let’s not even talk about abortion or sex education here.)
Fun fact: Texans are already banned from possessing more than six “obscene devices,” which are legally defined as anything “designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs,” per the penile code, “including a dildo or artificial vagina.” It’s hard to imagine police having any means of enforcing this strange, draconian law without somehow surveilling Texas nightstands or sex rooms, but you’ve got to commend our state leaders for trying… right?
Texas has a number of strange laws on this subject, according to KXAN. The state even dictates how adult toys can be marketed for sale: In 2004, Joanne Webb, a former elementary school teacher from Burleson who hosted Tupperware-style parties at which she hawked sex toys, was charged after selling a vibrator to two undercover police officers. “I saw this as a great opportunity to help educate women, help encourage them to open up the lines of communication between them and their partners, and be able to enhance their relationships,” Webb told ABC News in 2004. (Lol, nice try Joanne.) The charges were eventually dismissed, but that law is still on the books.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up another case two years later, which challenged the constitutionality of the law. NBC News reported an adult bookstore employee in El Paso, sued the state after his arrest. He had allegedly showed two undercover officers a device shaped like a penis and told a female officer the device would arouse and gratify her. (Sounds like a hero to us!)
The next year, in 2007, a Lubbock lingerie shop was raided for having items “deemed to be illegal by the Texas Penal Code.” KCBD reported then that Lubbock police arrested the store clerk at Somethin’ Sexy for having more than six “obscene devices.” Those charges were also dropped. And even though the Texas Attorney General’s Office and a judge both agreed in 2008, per Chron.com, that the statute is “facially unconstitutional and unenforceable,” it’s still on the books.
Read more at Chron.com.