islandvpico

(457 S.C. U.S. 853 1982)
 * Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico**

__Facts:__ The petitioners were The Board of Education of the Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 in New York. In February 1976, the Board gave an "unofficial direction" nine books (named below) be removed from the library shelves and delivered to the Board's offices, so that Board members could read them. The Board consisted of six men and one woman which is a state agency charged with the responsibility for the operation and administration of the public schools within the Island Trees School District. The board deemed the books as "anti-American", "anti-Christian", "anti-Semitic," and "just plain filthy." The respondents were four Island Trees High School students and one Island Trees Memorial Junior High School student. The respondents claimed that the Board's actions denied them their rights under the First Amendment. They (respondents) alleged that the petitioners had, "ordered the removal of the books from school libraries and proscribed their use in the curriculum because particular passages in the books offended their social, political and moral tastes and not because the books, taken as a whole, were lacking in educational value,"

__Issues/Answer:__ The principal question is; does the First Amendment impose any limitations upon the discretion of petitioners to remove library books from Island Trees High School and Junior High School libraries? **//Yes.//**

__Basis/Rational:__ Legal basis - Students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate," Tinker v. Des Moines School Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 506, and such rights of the students may be directly and sharply implicated by the removal of books from the shelves of a school library. The S.C. reinforced the "pall of orthodoxy" rule by forbidding removal of books by the local school board that was responding to political pressure from a local group of conservative parents. The S.C. said, "the right to receive ideas is a necessary predicate to the recipient's meaningful exercise of his own rights of speech, press, and political freedom." In brief, "we (S.C.) 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."//

Rationale: - Our Constitution does not permit the official suppression of ideas. Thus, whether the petitioners' removal of books from their school libraries denied respondents their First Amendment rights, the motivation behind the petitioners' actions was paramount.

__Notes:__ The nine books which were removed from the high school library were //Slaughterhouse Five// by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; //The Naked Ape//, by Desmond Morris; //Down These Mean Streets//, by Piri Thomas; //Best Short Stories of Negro Writers//, edited by Langston Hughes; //Go Ask Alice//, of anonymous authorship; //Laughing Boy//, by Oliver LaFarge; //Black Boy//, by Richard Wright; //A Hero Ain't Nothin'// //but a Sandwich//, by Alice Childress; and //Soul on Ice//, by Eldridge Cleaver. In addition, a book was removed from the junior high school library: //A Reader for Writers//, edited by Jerome Archer.

The petitioners attended a conference in September of 1975 sponsored by Parents of New York United (PONYU), a politically conservative organization that is concerned about education legislation in New York State. At this conference, the parents Ahrens and Hughes (two of the petitioners) obtained lists of books described as "objectionable" and "improper fare for school students." When they realized that these books where in their high and