Island Trees School District v. Pico

Board of Education v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982),^[1] 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.

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-Sem[i]tic, 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.

According to footnote 3 of the ruling, the books at issue have included Slaughterhouse-Five, The Naked Ape, Down These Mean Streets, Go Ask Alice, and The Fixer.

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. 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.

Brennan concludes the plurality opinion with a discussion of the extent of the school board's authority to remove books from the school library:

As noted earlier, nothing in our decision today affects in any way the discretion of a local school board to choose books to add to the libraries of their schools. Because we are concerned in this case with the suppression of ideas, our holding [457 U.S. 853, 872] today affects only the discretion to remove books. In brief, we hold that local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to "prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion." West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S., at 642. Such purposes stand inescapably condemned by our precedents .

Concurrences

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.

Dissents

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.

See also

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 457
• Island Trees Union Free School District
• List of banned books

References

External links

Works related to Board of Education v. Pico at Wikisource

• Island Trees School District
• Five Teens Win the Right to Read by Chris Crutcher
• Interview with Barbara Bernstein on the Pico Case - Supreme Court and School Library Censorship, by Mary Minow, LibraryLaw Blog, 10 August 2009.