Island Trees School District v. Pico

(Redirected from Board of Education, Island Trees School District v. Pico )

Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982), is a landmark case in which the United States Supreme Court split on the First Amendment issue of local school boards removing library books from junior high schools and high schools . Four justices ruled that it was unconstitutional, four concluded the contrary (with perhaps a few minor exceptions), and one concluded that the court need not decide the question on the merits. Pico was the first Supreme Court case to consider the right to receive information in a library setting under the First Amendment, but the court's fractured plurality decision left the scope of this right unclear.

Island Trees High School in 2019

Contents

• 1 Facts

  • 1.1 Background

  • 1.2 Case

• 2 Plurality

  • 2.1 Justice Blackmun's concurrence

  • 2.2 Justice White's concurrence

• 3 Dissents

  • 3.1 Chief Justice Burger's dissent

  • 3.2 Justice Powell's dissent

  • 3.3 Justice Rehnquist's dissent

  • 3.4 Justice O'Connor's dissent

• 4 Subsequent developments

• 5 See also

• 6 References

• 7 External links

Facts

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Island_Trees_School_District_v._Pico&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Facts")

Background

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Island_Trees_School_District_v._Pico&action=edit&section=2 "Edit section: Background")

In September 1975, the Island Trees Board of Education received a list of books deemed inappropriate by Parents of New York United. The board temporarily removed the books from school libraries and formed a committee to review the list. The committee found that five of the nine books should be returned, but the board overruled the decision and returned only two of the books.

A group of five high school students (including one junior high school student) who, according to oral argument, were 17, 16, 15, 14, and 13 years old at the time of the removal of the books, led by Steven Pico, filed a lawsuit against the school board by claiming a violation of First Amendment rights. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York granted summary judgment in favor of the school board, citing the discretion given to a school board's authority in terms of its political philosophy. The judgment was challenged and remanded by the Second Circuit after questions rose of the school board's motives.

Case

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Island_Trees_School_District_v._Pico&action=edit&section=3 "Edit section: Case")

According to the syllabus of the case:

Petitioner Board of Education of the Island Trees Union Free School District , 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.

Eleven books were the subject of the case. The books 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

• _Soul on Ice _, by Eldridge Cleaver

• _A Reader for Writers _, edited by Jerome Archer

• _The Fixer _, by Bernard Malamud

The first nine titles above were removed from shelves of the High School library; A Reader for Writers was removed from the Junior High School library because it contained the 1729 satirical essay _A Modest Proposal _ by Jonathan Swift which the Board found to be offensive; and The Fixer was removed from the curriculum of a 12th-grade literature course.

Plurality

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Island_Trees_School_District_v._Pico&action=edit&section=4 "Edit section: Plurality")

No single opinion commanded a majority of the Court or announced any legal binding rule. Justice Brennan announced the judgment of the Court affirming the Court of Appeals and delivered an opinion joined by Justices Marshall and Stevens and joined in all

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