Do students have a First Amendment right to receive information in books?
Yes, the First Amendment protects the right to receive information and ideas. In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court determined in Board of Education, Island Trees v. Pico that “the First Amendment rights of students may be directly and sharply implicated by the removal of books from the shelves of a school library.” In the Pico case, the school district argued that decisions by school officials about library books did not raise a First Amendment issue, and that they should have carte blanche to remove a library book for any reason. The Court disagreed, ruling that school officials had violated the First Amendment when they removed library books simply because they disagreed with the ideas and information contained therein. This principle was reaffirmed in 2003, when a federal district court ruled that a school district’s attempt to restrict access to J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books in school libraries violated its students’ First Amendment free speech rights. In finding for the parents wh
