Are school officials allowed to take books off the school library shelves or out of reading classes because they don’t like their ideas or their language?

Courts have said that school officials cannot remove books from school library shelves or classrooms simply to hold back the ideas they contain. On the other hand, courts have allowed school officials to remove books from classrooms or reading lists for "legitimate reasons," either because the language is inappropriate or because the books don’t approve the school’s values, or for curricular reasons. It is harder for a school to justify removing materials from the school library than from the classroom because students have a stronger First Amendment right to information in the library. The law is still very unclear at this point. Students, teachers and school librarians in California have challenged the censorship of many books and magazines legally. The freedom to read is something worth fighting for!