Bd. of Educ. v. Pico

Bd. of Educ. v. Pico

Opinion

 [*855]   [***439]   [**2802]  JUSTICE BRENNAN announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which JUSTICE MARSHALL and JUSTICE STEVENS joined, and in which JUSTICE BLACKMUN joined except for Part II-A-(1).

 The principal question presented is whether the First Amendment ² imposes limitations upon the exercise by a local  [*856]  school board of its discretion to remove library books  [***440]  from high school and junior high school libraries.

 [****7]  I

Petitioners are the Board of Education of the Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26, in New York, and Richard Ahrens, Frank Martin, Christina Fasulo, Patrick Hughes, Richard Melchers, Richard Michaels, and Louis Nessim. When this suit was brought, Ahrens was the President of the Board, Martin was the Vice President, and the remaining petitioners were Board members. The Board is a state agency charged with responsibility for the operation and administration of the public schools within the Island Trees School District, including the Island Trees High School and Island Trees Memorial Junior High School. Respondents are Steven Pico, Jacqueline Gold, Glenn Yarris, Russell Rieger, and Paul Sochinski. When this suit was brought, Pico, Gold, Yarris, and Rieger were students at the High School, and Sochinski was a student at the Junior High School.

In September 1975, petitioners Ahrens, Martin, and Hughes attended a conference sponsored by Parents of New York United (PONYU), a politically conservative organization of parents concerned about education legislation in the State of New York. At the conference these petitioners obtained lists of books described by Ahrens as "objectionable,"  [****8]  App. 22, and by Martin as "improper fare for school students," id., at 101. ³ [****9]  It was later determined that the  [**2803]  High School library contained nine of the listed books, and that another listed book was in the Junior High School library. ⁴ In  [*857]  February 1976, at a meeting with the Superintendent of Schools and the Principals of the High School and Junior High School, the Board gave an "unofficial direction" that the listed books be removed from the library shelves and delivered to the Board's offices, so that Board members could read them. ⁵ When this directive was carried out, it became publicized, and the Board issued a press release justifying its action. It characterized the removed books as "anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-[Semitic], and just plain filthy," and concluded that  [***441]  "[it] is our duty, our moral obligation, to protect the children in our schools from this moral danger as surely as from physical and medical dangers." 474 F.Supp. 387, 390 (EDNY 1979).

 [****10]  A short time later, the Board appointed a "Book Review Committee," consisting of four Island Trees parents and four members of the Island Trees schools staff, to read the listed books and to recommend to the Board whether the books should be retained, taking into account the books' "educational suitability," "good taste," "relevance," and "appropriateness to age and grade level." In July, the Committee  [*858]  made its final report to the Board, recommending that five of the listed books be retained ⁶ and that two others be removed from the school libraries. ⁷ As for the remaining four books, the Committee could not agree on two, ⁸ took no position on one, ⁹ and recommended that the last book be made available to students only with parental approval. ¹⁰ The Board substantially rejected the Committee's report later that month, deciding that only one book should be returned to the High School library without restriction, ¹¹ that another should be made available subject to parental approval, ¹² but that the remaining nine books should "be removed from elementary and secondary libraries and [from] use in the curriculum." Id., at 391. ¹³ The Board gave no reasons for rejecting [****11]  the recommendations of the Committee that it had appointed.

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