Legitimacy of Banning Books
In the case of Right to Read Defense Committee v. School Committee of Chelsea, 454 F. Supp. 703 (D. Mass. 1978), a citizen's group filed a civil rights suit, pursuant to 42 U.S.C.S. 1983, in opposition to the school committee and superintendent, relating to the committee's decision to eliminate an anthology from the high school library, based on the grievance of a parent to the language in one section of the collection.
The school committee determined upon a majority of votes to forbid from the high school library a collection of writings by young people which included a poem full of street language, while not obscene. The citizen's group brought suit against the committee and superintendent under 42 U.S.C.S.1983, looking for an order to put the collection back in the library based on the foundation that the committee violated the First Amendment rights of high school students, faculty, and staff. The court offered judgment in favor of the citizen's group and held that the committee was unsuccessful in demonstrating a considerable and lawful government interest in removing the collection. The court stated that offensive language was an inadequate reason to take away a work of at least some value which had no damaging effect on students. The court held that pursuant to the basic idea of the First Amendment to allow citizens the capability to speak and hear freely, a school should be a willingly available depot of ideas. The court said that it had the right to get involved in the management of school affairs with the intention of defending the balance...
In this case the idea of censorship was shot down.
In the case of A Book Named "John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" v. Attorney Gen. Of Mass., 383 U.S. 413 (U.S. 1966), appellants sought evaluation of a judgment from the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, which affirmed the
determination that the book in question was obscene and not permitted to have protection under U.S. Constitutional
amendments I and XIV.
Appellant book was tried under Mass. Gen. Laws Chapter 272, 28C et seq., and declared to be obscene and, thus, not sheltered by the
Constitution. The ruling was sustained by the state supreme court, which said that a book does not have to be unqualifiedly worthless prior to being deemed obscene. On appeal, the United States Supreme Court looked at the record, which showed that this book had been written many years before in 1750. The Court said that since this book had some
literary value, it was not completely without redeeming social value. Consequently, although the book might have been prurient and offensive to the standards to the community, the detail that it had literary value protected it…
