The Board of Education of the Island Trees School District in New York directed the removal of nine books from the libraries of the Island Trees senior and junior high schools because in the Board’s opinion the books were “antiAmerican, antiChristian, antiSemitic, and just plain filthy.” Some books included were: The Fixer, Soulon Ice, Slaughterhouse Five, Go AskAlice, The Best Stories by Negro Writers, and others. Four students from the high school and one from the junior high school sued the school district, claiming that the removal of the books was a violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech.
The court ruled against the school district saying that “students do not shed their constitutional rights at the school house gates
The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of the students, saying that the books were not required reading. According to Justice Brennan, who cited West Virginia Board of Education v. Bamette, 319 U.S.624 (1943), “Local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in these books and seek by their removal to prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.” He also cited Tinker v. Leggi tutto “In doing so the court protected what has come to be known as “symbolic speech”