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Comment by names_are_hard | Hacker News Reader

Honest question, I'm not a lawyer: is this bill actually unconstitutional? The government is not trying to limit the rights of individuals here, as far as I can tell parents and children are allowed to own and read whatever they want under this bill. Instead one arm of the government seeks to restrict another arm of the government (schools) by requiring it honor the wishes of (the most extreme of) the populace.

Edit: never mind, the article says the bill would apply to private schools as well, so I can see that not holding up. I wonder if the idea is to start with overreach and then when the backlash starts they can "compromise" by letting private schools teach what they want.

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Public school students retain constitutional rights (although in a weaker form).

> In our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism. School officials do not possess absolute authority over their students. Students… are possessed of fundamental rights which the State must respect, just as they themselves must respect their obligations to the State. In our system, students may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the State chooses to communicate. They may not be confined to the expression of those sentiments that are officially approved. In the absence of a specific showing of constitutionally valid reasons to regulate their speech, students are entitled to freedom of expression of their views.

- Supreme Court Majority Opinion, Tinker v. Des Moines

https://www.aclu.org/other/tinker-v-des-moines-landmark-supr...

I don’t agree with the concept but to your point, this regulates the schools not the students so I don’t think that applies.

A more analogous example might be the right to have a Gay-Straight Alliance club with all the access to school facilities other clubs have. See this long line of cases holding that if a school allows some clubs it must allow all clubs https://www.aclu.org/other/gsa-court-victories-guide-lgbtq-h...

I still don't think it quite fits, because this is about what the school provides governed by legislature. It would fit if the school had a library filled with donated books from students.

If this bill prevented students from bringing books to school, then I would agree, it fits.

The article says that it would impact public schools and public charter schools. The charter schools receive funding from the state, so they can just deny funding unless they meet certain criteria, which they already do. And that criteria could include not giving access to certain books to children.

It's tough because most people don't have a choice to pick up and move if they don't like their school board. As a parent, schools are a very important issue to me as it strikes at the autonomy you have as a parent. Many would have an issue with teaching religion in schools, and others would have an issue teaching gender studies in school. The compromise would be to limit the scope of education to the non-objectionable: science, reading, writing, math and history.

Normally I would want that decided upon on the local level, but given the nature of school zoning and difficulty of moving, I wouldn't be opposed to setting guidelines on a state level.

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