Title: Book Banning | The First Amendment Encyclopedia
Headings: The First Amendment Encyclopedia
The First Amendment Encyclopedia
Book Banning
By Susan L. Webb
Book banning is the most widespread form of censorship in the United States
Community standards may be taken into account when deciding if materials are subject to censor
Opponents of book banning emphasize the First Amendment rights of students

Content: teaching students how to think for themselves. Such actions, assert free speech proponents, endanger tolerance, free expression, and democracy. Community standards may be taken into account when deciding if materials are subject to censor
Although censorship violates the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, some limitations are constitutionally permissible. The courts have told public officials at all levels that they may take community standards into account when deciding whether materials are obscene or pornographic and thus subject to censor. They cannot, however, censor publications by generally accepted authors — such as Mark Twain, for example, J. K. Rowling, R. L. Stine, Judy Blume, or Robert Cormier — in order to placate a small segment of the community. Cormier’s Chocolate War was one of the American Library Association’s Top 10 Banned Books for 2005 and 2006. Those who oppose book banning emphasize that the First Amendment protects students’ rights to receive and express ideas. The Supreme Court in Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico (1982) ruled 5-4 that public schools can bar books that are “pervasively vulgar” or not right for the curriculum, but they cannot remove books “simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books.” The Court’s decision was, however, narrow, applying only to the removal of books from school library shelves. In this photo, Makenzie Hatfield a student at George Washington high school, holds banned books by author Pat Conroy in West Virginia in 2007.