Where the Supreme Court stands on banning books

• Some of these efforts have resulted in laws that threaten to jail librarians.
• Bans – and the banning of bans – have already ended up in the courts.
• They alleged that school officials violated students’ First Amendment rights when they removed books that discussed, race, racism and LGBTQ+ people.

Encounters with new ideas

• The case specifically focused on the school library and was not about curriculum in the classroom.
• One student, on behalf of four other students in the school district, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court.
• The suit claimed that removing the books from the library infringed upon the students’ First Amendment rights to freely access ideas and information.

An unclear ruling

• The ruling was divided – five justices affirmed the appeals court’s decision in favor of the students, though not all of them agreed on exactly why.
• Justices Thurgood Marshall and John Paul Stevens signed on to this opinion, which was not a majority opinion.
• Two justices wrote concurring decisions, but only one agreed with the trio’s overall conclusion that the board had unconstitutionally infringed on students’ rights.

The current state of the law

• Therefore, they ruled, school officials may remove books only for sound educational reasons or legitimate purposes – such as pervasive vulgarity or lack of educational suitability.
• If any of the current cases reach the Supreme Court, the current justices could rule differently, of course.