Board of Education v. PICO

BOARD of EDUCATION V. PICO

This Supreme Court case stands today as one of the most important cases in U.S. history related to the First Amendment. Officially known as the Board of Education, Island Trees School vs. Pico, this 1982 case involved Steven Pico and four other students who "challenged the school board's decision to pull eleven titles from library shelves in 1976," due to a number of complaints from the group Parents of New York United, composed of members from a mostly conservative community. The eleven books in question were Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, the Fixer by Bernard Malamud, the Naked Ape by anthropologists Desmond Morris, the Best Short Stories of Negro Writers, edited by author Langston Hughes, Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas, Go Ask Alice (anonymous author), Black Boy by Richard Wright, Laughing Boy by Oliver LaFarge, Soul on Ice by activist Eldridge Cleaver, a Reader for Writers, edited by Jerome Archer and a Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich by Alice Childress.

All of these books (fiction and non-fiction) were viewed by the Island Trees school board review committee as "irrelevant, vulgar, immoral, in bad taste and educationally unsuitable" for students at the school. After the news broke in the press, the school board reiterated that these titles were "Anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and just plain filthy" (Crutcher, 2007, Internet).

As a result of these books being removed from the library shelves at Island Trees school, Pico and his co-plaintiffs "filed a lawsuit challenging the board's ruling" which inevitably made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the case was decided in favor of the plaintiffs. As Clair Mullally declares, this case was recognized by the court (although not in total agreement, a 5 to 4 vote) as clearly infringing upon the First Amendment rights of the plaintiffs -- "If the party's intentions (were) to deny students access to ideas with which the party disagrees, it is a violation of the First Amendment" which protects an individual's right to the press and to freedom of expression (Crutcher, 2007, Internet).

Summations by Supreme Court Justices Brennan and Blackmun clearly express why the court voted in favor of the plaintiffs in this important case. First of all, Justice Brennan maintains that the case "does not involve textbooks, or indeed any books that... students would be required to read. The only books at issue are library books (which) are optional rather than required reading." What Brennan is attempting to say is that the students at Island Trees were not being forced to read the so-called "filth," but if they chose to read these books, their rights as protected under the First Amendment allowed them to read as much or as little as they pleased.