Plurality
No single opinion commanded a majority of the Court, or announced any legal binding rule. Justice Brennan announced the judgment of the Court affirming the Court of Appeals, and controlled the outcome of the case and delivered an opinion joined by Justices Marshall and Stevens, and joined in all but Part II-A(1) by Justice Blackmun. Justice Blackmun filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
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, 393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969). The First Amendment in this case included the right to read library books of the student's choosing.
Brennan concludes the plurality opinion with a discussion of the extent of the school board's authority to remove books from the school library:
As noted earlier, nothing in our decision today affects in any way the discretion of a local school board to choose books to add to the libraries of their schools. Because we are concerned in this case with the suppression of ideas, our holding today affects only the discretion to remove books. 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." West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S., at 642. Such purposes stand inescapably condemned by our precedents .Read more about this topic: Island Trees School District V. Pico
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