Source: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Board_of_Education_v._Pico/Dissent_Rehnquist
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 13:07:14+00:00

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When JUSTICE BRENNAN finally does address the state of the record, he refers to snippets and excerpts of the relevant facts to explain why a grant of summary judgment was improper. But he totally ignores the effect of Rule 9(g) of the local rules of the District Court, under which the parties set forth their version of the disputed facts in this case.  Since [p906] summary judgment was entered against respondents, they are entitled to have their version of the facts, as embodied in their Rule 9(g) statement, accepted for purposes of our review. Since the parties themselves are presumably the best judges of the extent of the factual dispute between them, however, respondents certainly are not entitled to any more favorable version of the facts than that contained in their own Rule 9(g) statement. JUSTICE BRENNAN's combing through the record of affidavits, school bulletins, and the like for bits and snatches of dispute is therefore entirely beside the point at this stage of the case.
Ante at 870-871 (emphasis in original). I can cheerfully concede all of this, but, as in so many other cases, the extreme examples are seldom the ones that arise in the real world of constitutional litigation. In this case, the facts, taken most favorably to respondents, suggest that nothing of this sort happened. The nine books removed undoubtedly did contain "ideas," but, in the light of the excerpts from them found in the dissenting opinion of Judge Mansfield in the Court of Appeals, it is apparent that eight of them contained demonstrable amounts of vulgarity and profanity, see 638 F.2d 404, 419-422, n. 1 (CA2 1980), and the ninth contained [p908] nothing that could be considered partisan or political, see id. at 428, n. 6. As already demonstrated, respondents admitted as much. Petitioners did not, for the reasons stated hereafter, run afoul of the First and Fourteenth Amendments by removing these particular books from the library in the manner in which they did. I would save for another day — feeling quite confident that that day will not arrive — the extreme examples posed in JUSTICE BRENNAN's opinion.
With these differentiated roles of government in mind, it is helpful to assess the role of government as educator, as compared with the role of government as sovereign. When it acts as an educator, at least at the elementary and secondary school level, the government is engaged in inculcating social values and knowledge in relatively impressionable young people. Obviously, there are innumerable decisions to be made as to what courses should be taught, what books should be purchased, or what teachers should be employed. In every one of these areas, the members of a school board will act on the basis of their own personal or moral values, will attempt to mirror those of the community, or will abdicate the making of such decisions to so-called "experts."  In this connection, I find myself entirely in agreement with the observation of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Zykan v. Warsaw Community School Corp., 631 F.2d 1300, 1305 (1980), that it is "permissible and appropriate for local boards to make educational decisions based upon their personal social, political and moral views." In the very course of administering the many-faceted operations of a school district, the mere decision to purchase some books will necessarily preclude the possibility of purchasing others. The decision to teach a particular subject may preclude the possibility of teaching another subject. A decision to replace a teacher because of ineffectiveness may, by implication, be seen as a disparagement of the subject matter taught. In each of these instances, however, the book or the exposure to the [p910] subject matter may be acquired elsewhere. The managers of the school district are not proscribing it as to the citizenry in general, but are simply determining that it will not be included in the curriculum or school library. In short, actions by the government as educator do not raise the same First Amendment concerns as actions by the government as sovereign.
Despite JUSTICE BRENNAN's suggestion to the contrary, this Court has never held that the First Amendment grants junior high school and high school students a right of access to certain information in school. It is true that the Court has recognized a limited version of that right in other settings, and JUSTICE BRENNAN quotes language from five such decisions and one of his own concurring opinions in order to demonstrate the viability of the right-to-receive doctrine. Ante at 866-867. But not one of these cases concerned or even purported to discuss elementary or secondary educational institutions.  JUSTICE BRENNAN brushes over this significant [p912] omission in First Amendment law by citing Tinker v. Des Moines School District for the proposition that "students too are beneficiaries of this [right-to-receive] principle." Ante at 868. But Tinker held no such thing. One may read Tinker in vain to find any recognition of a First Amendment right to receive information. Tinker, as already mentioned, was based entirely on the students' right to express their political views.
Nor does the right-to-receive doctrine recognized in our past decisions apply to schools by analogy. JUSTICE BRENNAN correctly characterizes the right of access to ideas as "an inherent corollary of the rights of free speech and press" which "follows ineluctably from the sender's First Amendment right to send them." Ante at 867 (emphasis in original). But he then fails to recognize the predicate right to speak from which the students' right to receive must follow. It would be ludicrous, of course, to contend that all authors have a constitutional right to have their books placed in junior high school and high school libraries. And yet, without such a right, our prior precedents would not recognize the reciprocal right to receive information. JUSTICE BRENNAN disregards this inconsistency with our prior cases and fails to explain the constitutional or logical underpinnings of a right to hear ideas in a place where no speaker has the right to express them.
JUSTICE BRENNAN also correctly notes that the reciprocal nature of the right to receive information derives from the fact that it "is a necessary predicate to the recipient's meaningful [p913] exercise of his own rights of speech, press, and political freedom." Ibid. (emphasis in original). But the denial of access to ideas inhibits one's own acquisition of knowledge only when that denial is relatively complete. If the denied ideas are readily available from the same source in other accessible locations, the benefits to be gained from exposure to those ideas have not been foreclosed by the State. This fact is inherent in the right-to-receive cases relied on by JUSTICE BRENNAN, every one of which concerned the complete denial of access to the ideas sought.  Our past decisions are thus unlike this case, where the removed books are readily available to students and nonstudents alike at the corner bookstore or the public library.
[A] particular symbol — black armbands worn to exhibit opposition to this Nation's involvement in Vietnam — was singled out for prohibition. Clearly, the prohibition of expression of one particular opinion, at least without evidence that it is necessary to avoid material and substantial interference with schoolwork or discipline, is not constitutionally permissible.
I think the Court will far better serve the cause of First Amendment jurisprudence by candidly recognizing that the role of government as sovereign is subject to more stringent limitations than is the role of government as employer, property owner, or educator. It must also be recognized that the government as educator is subject to fewer strictures when operating an elementary and secondary school system than when operating an institution of higher learning. Cf. Tilton v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 672, 685-686 (1971) (opinion of BURGER, C.J.). With respect to the education of children in elementary and secondary schools, the school board may properly determine in many cases that a particular book, a particular course, or even a particular area of knowledge is not educationally suitable for inclusion within the body of knowledge which the school seeks to impart. Without more, this is not a condemnation of the book or the course; it is only a determination akin to that referred to by the Court in Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365, 388 (1926): "A nuisance may be merely a right thing in the wrong place, — like a pig in the parlor instead of the barnyard."
^ . Paragraph 4 of respondents' Rule 9(g) statement asserts that petitioners' "evaluation of the suitability of the books was based on [their] personal values, morals, and tastes." App. 139.
^ . There are intimations in JUSTICE BRENNAN's opinion that, if petitioners had only consulted literary experts, librarians, and teachers, their decision might better withstand First Amendment attack. Ante at 874, and n. 26. These observations seem to me wholly fatuous; surely ideas are no more accessible or no less suppressed if the school board merely ratifies the opinion of some other group, rather than following its own opinion.
^ . The right of corporations to make expenditures or contributions in order to influence ballot issues was the question presented in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, 783 (1978), and the language which JUSTICE BRENNAN quotes from that decision, ante at 866, was explicitly limited to "the Court's decisions involving corporations in the business of communications or entertainment." 435 U.S. at 783. In Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U.S. 753 (1972), the Court upheld the power of Congress and the Executive Branch to prevent the entry into this country of a Marxist theoretician who had been invited to lecture at an American university, despite the First Amendment rights of citizens who wished to hear him. Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (1969), held that the First Amendment prohibits States from making the private possession of obscene material a crime, and Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), held that the right of privacy prohibits States from forbidding the use of contraceptives. Finally, Martin v. Struthers, 319 U.S. 141 (1943), held that the First Amendment protects the door-to-door distribution of religious literature.
^ . In First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, supra, public access to corporate viewpoints on ballot issues not directly affecting the corporations was foreclosed by the Massachusetts law prohibiting corporate expenditures to express such viewpoints. In Kleindienst v. Mandel, supra, the Court noted that the potential recipients of Mandel's ideas were completely deprived of the "particular qualities inherent in sustained, face-to-face debate, discussion and questioning." 408 U.S. at 765. The Georgia law in Stanley v. Georgia, supra, criminalized all private possession of obscene material, and the statute in Griswold v. Connecticut, supra, criminalized all use of contraceptive devices or actions encouraging the use of such devices. The ordinance at issue in Martin v. Struthers, supra, forbade all door-to-door distribution of religious literature, while the statute challenged in Lamont v. Postmaster General, supra, required persons receiving Communist propaganda in the mails affirmatively to state their desire to receive such mailings.

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