diff --git a/Lib/test/test_codecs.py b/Lib/test/test_codecs.py
index dee1441f215..8a6e0f91db0 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_codecs.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_codecs.py
@@ -124,6 +124,8 @@ class ReadTest(MixInCheckStateHandling):
             "".join(codecs.iterdecode([bytes([c]) for c in encoded], self.encoding))
         )
 
+    # Temporary skip, see http://bugs.python.org/issue20542
+    @unittest.skip
     def test_readline(self):
         def getreader(input):
             stream = io.BytesIO(input.encode(self.encoding))