Board of Education v. Pico: First Amendment & School Libraries

Introduction

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 Board of Education, Island Trees School District v. Pico, this 1982 case involved Steven Pico and four other students who challenged the school board's decision to remove eleven titles from library shelves in 1976. The removals followed complaints from the group Parents of New York United, composed of members from a mostly conservative community. The case ultimately raised a fundamental constitutional question: can a public school board remove books from a school library simply because it finds their content objectionable?

The Books Removed and the School Board's Justifications

The eleven books in question were Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, The Fixer by Bernard Malamud, The Naked Ape by anthropologist Desmond Morris, The Best Short Stories of Negro Writers edited by Langston Hughes, Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas, Go Ask Alice (anonymous), 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.

The Legal Challenge and Supreme Court Ruling

All of these books — both 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. After the news broke in the press, the school board elaborated that these titles were "Anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and just plain filthy" (Crutcher, 2007). The board's characterizations reflected the deep cultural and religious conservatism of the community, and would become central to the legal arguments that followed.

Opinions of Justices Brennan and Blackmun

As a result of the books being removed from the library shelves at Island Trees, Pico and his co-plaintiffs filed a lawsuit challenging the board's decision. The case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was decided in favor of the plaintiffs. As Clair Mullally notes, the Court — though not in total agreement, ruling 5 to 4 — recognized that the board's actions clearly infringed upon the plaintiffs' First Amendment rights. The Court held that "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 freedom of expression and access to the press (Crutcher, 2007).

The summations by Supreme Court Justices Brennan and Blackmun clearly express why the Court voted in favor of the plaintiffs. Justice Brennan maintained 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." Brennan's point was that the students at Island Trees were not being compelled to read the disputed material; rather, the First Amendment protected their right to choose to read as much or as little of these books as they wished.

Similarly, Justice Blackmun asserted that the books in question could not be removed from library shelves "for the purpose of restricting access to the political ideas or social perspectives" expressed by their authors. Furthermore, the books could not be removed if "the actions of the board members are motivated simply by the disapproval of the ideas involved" in the disputed works. In other words, Blackmun indicated that personal or ideological objection to a book's content is not, on its own, a legally sufficient reason to remove it from a school library.

Conclusion: Censorship and the First Amendment

In essence, this entire case is nothing short of plain and outright censorship. The board members, being deeply conservative and guided by strong religious convictions, found the materials objectionable and sought to ensure that no student could access them. However, because the First Amendment guarantees the right to read and receive information freely, the board members did not have the authority to restrict access to "objectionable" material solely on the grounds that they viewed it as vulgar, immoral, or inappropriate. The ruling in Board of Education v. Pico remains a critical precedent in intellectual freedom law, affirming that student rights do not end at the schoolhouse door — and certainly not at the library shelf.