Island Trees School District v. Pico
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| Board of Education v. Pico | |||||||||||||
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| Argued March 2, 1982 Decided June 25, 1982 |
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| Holding | |||||||||||||
| The 1st Amendment limits the power of local school boards to remove library books from junior high schools and high schools. | |||||||||||||
| Court membership | |||||||||||||
| Chief Justice: Warren E. Burger Associate Justices: William J. Brennan, Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr., William Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor |
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| Case opinions | |||||||||||||
| Majority by: Brennan Joined by: Marshall, Stevens; Blackmun (all but parts II-A(1)) Concurrence by: Blackmun Concurrence by: White Dissent by: Burger Joined by: Powell, Rehnquist, O'Connor Dissent by: Powell Dissent by: Rehnquist Joined by: Burger, Powell Dissent by: O'Connor |
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| Laws applied | |||||||||||||
| U.S. Const. amend. I | |||||||||||||
Board of Education v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that the First Amendment limits the power of local school boards to remove library books from junior high schools and high schools.
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[edit] Facts
According to the syllabus of the case:
- Petitioner Board of Education, rejecting recommendations of a committee of parents and school staff that it had appointed, ordered that certain books, which the Board characterized as "anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-[Semitic], and just plain filthy," be removed from high school and junior high school libraries. Respondent students then brought this action for declaratory and injunctive relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against the Board and petitioner Board members, alleging that the Board's actions had denied respondents their rights under the First Amendment. The District Court granted summary judgment in petitioners' favor. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded for a trial on the merits of respondents' allegations.
[edit] Opinion of the Court
While no single opinion commanded a majority of the Court - indeed, the case produced seven opinions from the nine Justices - the opinion of Justice Brennan, affirming the Court of Appeals, controlled the outcome of the case. Brennan announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion joined by Justices Marshall and Stevens, and joined in all but Part II-A(1) by Justice Blackmun, joined. Justice Blackmun filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. Justice White filed an opinion concurring in the judgment.
Justice Brennan noted the Court had previously held that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate," Tinker v. Des Moines School District, 393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969). The First Amendment in this case included the right to read library books of the student's choosing.
Justice Blackmun, concurring, concluded that a proper balance between the limited constitutional restriction imposed on school officials by the First Amendment and the broad state authority to regulate education, would be struck by holding that school officials may not remove books from school libraries for the purpose of restricting access to the political ideas or social perspectives discussed in the books, when that action is motivated simply by the officials' disapproval of the ideas involved.
Justice White, while agreeing that there should be a trial to resolve the factual issues, concluded that there is no necessity at this point for discussing the extent to which the First Amendment limits the school board's discretion to remove books from the school libraries.
Regarding sexually inappropriate books, however, the Court found it "perfectly permissible" to remove them from the school library:
On the other hand, respondents implicitly concede that an unconstitutional motivation would not be demonstrated if it were shown that petitioners had decided to remove the books at issue because those books were pervasively vulgar. Tr. of Oral Arg. 36. And again, respondents concede that if it were demonstrated that the removal decision was based solely upon the "educational suitability" of the books in question, then their removal would be "perfectly permissible." Id., at 53. In other words, in respondents' view such motivations, if decisive of petitioners' actions, would not carry the danger of an official suppression of ideas, and thus would not violate respondents' First Amendment rights.
[edit] Dissenting opinions
Chief Justice Burger filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Powell, Rehnquist, and O'Connor joined. Justice Rehnquist filed a dissenting opinion, in which Chief Justice Burger and Justice Powell joined. Justices Powell and O'Connor each filed an additional dissenting opinion.
