When may public libraries, and especially public school libraries, remove books based on their content?
In Pico v. Bd. of Ed. (1982), the Supreme Court split 4-1-4 on the question. All the Justices agreed that books could be removed if they are "pervasively vulgar" or otherwise age-inappropriate. But four liberal Justices (to oversimplify) concluded that viewpoint-based removals are forbidden. Four conservative Justices concluded that they are permissible (because the government gets to choose what's included in either the curriculum or the libraries at government-run schools). And the ninth Justice, the centrist Justice White, concluded that there was no occasion in the case to decide the matter.
Since then, in Little v. Llano County (5th Cir. 2025), a 10-7 Fifth Circuit en banc majority concluded that the government can pick and choose what books can be removed from public or public school libraries, because people don't have a "right to receive information" via government-run libraries: "It is one thing to tell the government it cannot stop you from receiving a book. The First Amendment protects your right to do that. It is another thing for you to tell the government which books it must keep in the library." And just today, a unanimous Eighth Circuit panel held (in Penguin Random House, LLC v. Robbins, written by Judge Ralph Erickson, joined by Judges Lavenski Smith and Jonathan Kobes), that the government likely has broad (though not entirely unlimited) authority to pick and choose what books can be removed at least from public school libraries. An excerpt:
