On the other hand, a motive of debate was whether or not the Court should be intervening on issues that, ultimately, belong to daily operations in schools. The Court judged, however, that this was a breech to "basic constitutional values" (as in Epperson vs. Arkansas) and, in this sense, the judicial system's intervention becomes a necessity.

Additionally, the Court decided that the school board's decision could not be justified by the sole means of "educational suitability," which would have made it permissible, but that it was based on a purely partisan, political approach (some of the 9 titles clearly suggest this).

Petitioners rightly possess significant discretion to determine the content of...

But that discretion may not be exercised in a narrowly partisan or political manner."
ANALYSIS

In Board of Education vs. Pico, the Supreme Court affirmed, with a 5-4 vote an order from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals of a trial to determine whether the school board was acting from unconstitutional motives in removing nine books from the school library. Although their constitutional basis was undecided, their argumentation tended to show that the removal of certain books, when done in a partisan manner, was a breech of the First Amendment corollary of access to information.

The school board's action was narrowly judged to be unconstitutional, following this argumentation.