What Happened in Campbell v. St. Tammany Parish School Board?

Only one library book ban case has ever been decided by the US Supreme Court: Island Trees v. Pico (1982). In that case, a school board in Nassau County, New York, removed a series of books from the high school and junior high libraries. A group of students led by senior Steven Pico sued the school, losing at trial but winning on appeal.

The Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that the books were improperly banned, but with only four of nine justices agreeing on the reasoning, the decision was considered weak. Indeed, several lower courts in other cases disagreed with Pico. 

In Muir v. Alabama Educational Television Commission, for example, two television stations were sued for last-minute cancellations of programs that they deemed politically risky. Ruling against the plaintiffs, the court rejected their reliance on the Pico ruling, calling it “of no precedential value as to the application of the First Amendment.”

In other cases, however, Pico has played a vital role. This year, 2025, is the thirtieth anniversary of one of these cases: Campbell v. St. Tammany Parish School Board.

Campbell involved

the decision of the St. Tammany Parish School Board [in Louisiana] to remove the book Voodoo & Hoodoo, by Jim Haskins, from the public school libraries of the parish [. . .] Most of the first half of the Book discusses the evolution and practice of voodoo and hoodoo in African-American communities in this country, including in New Orleans, Louisiana. The second half of the Book is devoted to a presentation of “spells,” “tricks,” “hexes,” “recipes,” (spells) that outline, in how-to form, the way to bring about particular events. 

Haskins was an educator-turned-writer who, according to the New York Times, “became one of America’s most prolific children’s book authors with more than 100 works of nonfiction to his credit.”

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A group of parents sued the school board, claiming that it violated their children’s First Amendment rights. The District Court awarded summary judgment—i.e., a win without a trial—in the parents’ favor, and the school board appealed.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, rather than dismissing Pico, discussed it at length, noting that it emphasized the “unique role of the school library,” that “students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to [. . .] gain new maturity and understanding,” and that the library has always been “the principal locus of such freedom.” Ultimately, the court ruled that, “[e]ven though the constitutional analysis in the Pico plurality opinion does not constitute binding precedent, it may properly serve as guidance.”

Disagreeing that the case should have been dismissed via summary judgment, the Fifth Circuit ordered it back down for a trial. Later, the parties settled the case by returning Voodoo and Hoodoo to the libraries and placing it in a special reserve area.

The Supreme Court has not reconsidered Pico in over forty years. I think it will before long. It has to. Book ban lawsuits are spreading through the system, and judges are flying blind, continuing to make guidance-free rulings. All it takes is one ultra-determined litigant to push through a test case, a Pico 2.0.

We might be headed that way with Little v. Llano County, a Texas book removal case which differs from Pico and Campbell in a crucial way: It concerns public libraries, not school ones.

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Public libraries, in the words of UCLA professor Eugene Volokh, “aren’t the adjunct to any sort of school curriculum. [They] are much more about giving more options to readers, rather than about teaching particular skills and attitudes to students.” In other words, the First Amendment should be more applicable, resulting in a more straightforward ruling.

Yet the outcome in Little is far from certain. The District Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, which a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit was ready to uphold. Then, on July 3, 2024, the full court inexplicably vacated the panel’s ruling and ordered a new hearing, which took place on September 24.

At that hearing, Llano County’s attorney, Jonathan Mitchell, told the court that its 1995 holding in Campbell was “wrong and should be overruled,” insisting that “library curation decisions are government speech,” and therefore protected by the First Amendment. Arguing directly against Pico, Mitchell said that failing to include a book in a library collection is “no different from a government that decides to withdraw or remove all handguns from a government-owned store” and “no different from a governmental unit that decides to remove or cancel abortion services that were previously offered at a government-owned hospital.”

This “government speech” argument has failed in several other book banning cases, including an earlier one before the Fifth Circuit, Book People, Inc. v. Wong. According to EveryLibrary, the argument should fail in Little. (The Fifth Circuit hasn’t issued its ruling yet.) 

Does that mean the Supreme Court, if Little advances that far, would eschew it? The best anyone can hope for is “maybe.”

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Another argument that might sway the high court is a religious one — i.e., that certain books must be removed from libraries because they infringe on the religious freedom of one group or another. Religion was not part of Pico or Campbell, but religious cases have exploded at the Supreme Court, which seems to invite them.

In the past decade, the Court has ruled, under the banner of religious liberty, 

• that a company can deny its employees insurance coverage for contraceptives (Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores), 
• that a high school football coach was unjustly terminated for kneeling on the field in private prayer after games (Kennedy v. Bremerton School District), and 
• that a maker of wedding cakes can refuse service to a same-sex couple (Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission). 

Last month, the Court heard oral arguments in Mahmoud v. Taylor, in which it will tackle the question of whether parents can be prohibited from opting their children out of lessons involving books whose contents they disapprove of on religious grounds.

Here’s hoping Little, Mahmoud, and future book-related cases will go the way of Island Trees v. Pico and Campbell v. St. Tammany.

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