The first amendment does provide freedom of speech and press and this does apply to students however...
"Obscenity is a category of speech unprotected by the First Amendment. Obscenity laws are concerned with prohibiting lewd, filthy, or disgusting words or pictures. Indecent materials or depictions, normally speech or artistic expressions, may be restricted in terms of time, place, and manner, but are still protected by the First Amendment. - https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/obscenity
In 1986, a high school student delivered a speech that included a sexual metaphor. The student was suspended. The student's family filed a suit claiming his First Amendment rights to freedom of speech. The court held that the First Amendment did not prevent the school district from disciplining the student because it is a highly appropriate function of public education to prohibit the use of vulgar and offensive terms in public discourse.
According to the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark 1982 decision, the First Amendment rights of students may be “implicated by the removal of books from the shelves of a school library.
“In brief, we hold that local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’” Pico , 457 U.S. at 872.
The Justice who cast the tie-breaking vote added that the school officials can use discretion to remove books based on lack of educational value or based on containing vulgar content inappropriate for school aged readers and still be consistent with the First Amendment. He went on to say the power to determine what is vulgar, lewd, and plainly offensive lies first with administration and ultimately with the school board.
While I haven’t read all the books that were considered in this case, my understanding through research and through reading “the most questionable” ones based on vulgarity, is that none of the books challenged in this case included sexually explicit content.
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