Island Trees School District v. Pico

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Board of Education v. Pico
Seal of the United States Supreme Court.svg
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 2, 1982
Decided June 25, 1982
Full case name Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26, et al. v. Pico, by his next friend Pico, et al.
Citations 457 U.S. 853 (more)
102 S. Ct. 2799; 73 L. Ed. 2d 435; 1982 U.S. LEXIS 8; 8 Media L. Rep. 1721
Prior history Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Holding
The 1st Amendment limits the power of local school boards to remove library books from junior high schools and high schools.
Court membership
Chief Justice
Warren E. Burger
Case opinions
Plurality Brennan, joined by Marshall, Stevens; Blackmun (all but parts II-A(1))
Concurrence Blackmun
Concurrence White
Dissent Burger, joined by Powell, Rehnquist, O'Connor
Dissent Powell
Dissent Rehnquist, joined by Burger, Powell
Dissent O'Connor
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. I

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.

Contents

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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 .

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Text of Island Trees School District v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982) is available from: Justia · Findlaw

[edit] External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:


 
Sedition and
imminent danger
Fighting words and
the heckler's veto
Freedom of assembly
and public forums
Symbolic speech
Compelled speech
School speech
Obscenity
Rosen v. United States (1896) • United States v. One Book Called Ulysses (S.D.N.Y. 1933) • Roth v. United States (1957) • One, Inc. v. Olesen (1958) • Marcus v. Search Warrant (1961) • MANual Enterprises v. Day (1962) • Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964) • Quantity of Books v. Kansas (1964) • Freedman v. Maryland (1965) • Memoirs v. Massachusetts (1966) • Redrup v. New York (1967) • Ginsberg v. New York (1968) • Stanley v. Georgia (1969) • United States v. Thirty-seven Photographs (1971) • Kois v. Wisconsin (1972) • Miller v. California (1973) • Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton (1973) • United States v. 12 200-ft. Reels of Film (1973) • Jenkins v. Georgia (1974) • New York v. Ferber (1982) • American Booksellers v. Hudnut (7th Cir., 1985) • Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc. (1986) • Osborne v. Ohio (1990) • United States v. X-Citement Video (1994) • Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union (1997) • United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group (2000) • Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002) • Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union (2002) • Nitke v. Gonzales (S.D.N.Y., 2005) • United States v. Williams (2008) • FCC v. Fox Television Stations (2009 case) (2009) • American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression v. Strickland (6th Cir., 2009) • United States v. Kilbride (9th Cir., 2009) • United States v. Stevens (2010)
Public employees
Hatch Act
and similar laws
Commercial speech
Campaign finance and
political speech
Buckley v. Valeo (1976) • First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978) • Citizens Against Rent Control v. City of Berkeley (1981) • California Medical Association v. FEC (1981) • Brown v. Socialist Workers '74 Campaign Committee (1982) • FEC v. National Conservative Political Action Committee (1985) • FEC v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life (1986) • Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990) • McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (1995) • Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. FEC (1996) • Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC (2000) • FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee (2001) • McConnell v. FEC (2003) • FEC v. Beaumont (2003) • Randall v. Sorrell (2006) • FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. (2007) • Davis v. FEC (2008) • Citizens United v. FEC (2010) • Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett. (2011)
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