[2] In September 1975, the Island Trees Board of Education received a list of books deemed inappropriate by Parents of New York United.

The board temporarily removed the books from school libraries and formed a committee to review the list.

Justice Brennan noted the Court had previously held that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate" (Tinker v. Des Moines School District).

Because we are concerned in this case with the suppression of ideas, our holding [457 U.S. 853, 872] today affects only the discretion to remove books.

[12]Justice Blackmun, concurring, concluded that a proper balance between the limited constitutional restriction imposed on school officials by the First Amendment and the broad state authority to regulate education would be struck by holding that school officials may not remove books from school libraries for the purpose of restricting access to the political perspectives or social ideas discussed in the books when that action is motivated simply by the officials' disapproval of the ideas involved.

Writing about the plurality opinion, Burger stated, "Were this to become the law, this Court would come perilously close to becoming a 'super censor' of school board library decisions."

In order to fulfill its function, an elected school board must express its views on the subjects which are taught to its students.

It is a startling erosion of the very idea of democratic government to have this Court arrogate to itself the power the plurality asserts today.

"[16] He ended, "I categorically reject this notion that the Constitution dictates that judges, rather than parents, teachers, and local school boards, must determine how the standards of morality and vulgarity are to be treated in the classroom."

[18] He closed his dissenting opinion by calling the plurality's decision "a debilitating encroachment upon the institutions of a free people".

When it acts as an educator... the government is engaged in inculcating social values and knowledge in relatively impressionable young people.

In a very short dissenting opinion, Justice O'Connor found the school board to take on a special role as educator.