Schools control the curriculum, but library censorship has limits.  Students have a constitutional right both to express and to receive ideas because the ability to receive ideas is necessary to the meaningful exercise of freedom of speech.  A school board may not remove books from school libraries based solely upon the board’s view of what is acceptable in politics, religion, or other matters of opinion.  Though the school’s authority over classroom texts is fairly broad because of the school’s duty to teach “community values” in the classroom, the school library is different because it has a broader purpose -- to provide materials, media, and computer access so that students can explore all the world’s knowledge to educate and enrich themselves. [1]

Schools may select textbooks and other readings consistent with the community’s educational goals. The content of textbooks and how schools decide which books are appropriate is a subject of great debate, for example how biology texts treat evolution. [2]

[1] Bd. of Educ., Island Trees Union Free Sch. Dist. No. 26 v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982). The Court split 5-4 and there was no opinion that a majority could agree on.  That means the legal principle to be derived from the case is uncertain.  The Chief Justice, the late William Rehnquist, even wrote in his dissent that “unlike university or public libraries…school libraries are not designed for freewheeling inquiry.”  457 U.S. at 915.  The case involved nine books removed after parents heard about them at a conservative meeting and asked the board to prohibit any assignment to read them and take them off the library shelves because they were “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Sem[i]tic, and just plain filthy.” The nine included Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse Five,  and Richard Wright’s autobiography, Black Boy.

[2] The latest in a long line of cases about teaching biology is Kitzmiller v. Dover Area Sch. Dist., 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 (M.D. Pa. 2005).  The most famous is the 1925 “monkey” trial (dramatized in the play and movie “Inherit the Wind”) that pitted Clarence Darrow against William Jennings Bryan.  Fiery Christian orator Bryan prosecuted teacher John T. Scopes for the Tennessee crime of teaching evolution; ACLU attorney Darrow was defense counsel.  Scopes was convicted and the Tennessee Supreme Court saw no First Amendment problem, but still set aside the conviction on the technical ground that the $100 fine exceeded the power of the court sitting without a jury.  Scopes v.  State, 289 S.W. 363 (Tenn. 1927).