Supreme Court Cases on Censorship

As I have stated numerous times before, censorship has been around for many decades. More importantly, reasons for censorship have not dramatically changed over time, showing that society, although more liberal today, still refuses to believe holistically in the First Amendment. The following are towo Supreme Court cases. I am using two very different time periods because I want to demonstrate how censorship has not changed all that much.


Case # 1: Evans v. Selma Union High School District of Fresno County, Cali. 1924

The California Supreme Court decided in favor of Selma Union High School to allow it to purchase 12 copies of the Bible in the King James version. There was some controvery over this and some people felt that allowing such a text in a high school library would be promoting the theory of dogma and would, in effect, corrupt the students. The Supreme Court, though, stated, "The mere act of purchasing a book does not carry with it any implication of adoption of the theory or dogma contained therein, or any approval of the book itself, except as a work of literature fit to be included in a reference library."


Case # 2: Counts v. Cedarville School District, Arkansas, 2003

A federal district court ruled against the Cedarville School District's attempt to restrict the reading of Harry Potter books. The school had been using a system by which parents needed to give written permission for their children to read the books. The school felt that the books condoned witchcraft and defying authority. However, the court decided that doing so directly infringed on the students' First Amendment rights and “[r]egardless of the personal distaste with which these individuals regard 'witchcraft,’ it is not properly within their power and authority as members of defendant’s school board to prevent the students at Cedarville from reading about it.” The court also said that requiring written parental consent was "stigmatizing" the Harry Potter books and those who choose to read them.


I was happy to see that both court cases resulted in support of anti-censorship. However, the negative implications from these two examples is that people continually find some of the most absurd reasons to censor books...defying authority? I think the parents could come up with something a little better than this to use...if they are going to try to censor a book, they should at least come prepared. If I were the judge and I read their reasons for trying to censor the Harry Potter books, I would laugh in their faces and rip the papers up...

Source: http://www.nsba.org/site/doc_cosa.asp?TRACKID=&VID=50&CID=487&DID=11872