> It seems to me that the government is allowed to decide what books to buy and stock in its own libraries. I don't understand how freedom of speech obligates the government to make a book available for free.

The concern here is that letting the government decide which books are kosher for its school libraries and which books aren't kosher is that taken to its extreme, the government could ban all books that aren't the King James Bible without explicitly adopting a pro-King James Bible policy. And if that's the only kind of book they stock in the library, then children who want to check out books are going to be reading literature with a certain kind of slant to it.

Replace the King James Bible with whatever you personally wouldn't want kids to be reading, e.g. the Quran or the Kama Sutra.

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terminalshort 3 days ago | parent [-]

> The concern here is that letting the government decide which books are kosher for its school libraries and which books aren't

But there isn't any other choice except to not have school libraries at all. The library is owned by the government and the books are paid for by government funds. Somebody has to decide what goes in the library and what doesn't. Who would that be other than the government?

	▲	nozzlegear 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The government can decide what to teach in its curriculum – it already does that. But the school library doesn't exist solely to deliver curriculum materials directly into the heads of students; it's one of the places where students are supposed to be able to explore ideas and concepts beyond their official lesson plans. The courts have ruled over and over that removing books from school libraries based on the ideas or viewpoints within is a First Amendment violation. So to answer your question: the government can stock the libraries, or the school board can stock them, or the librarian can stock them. The courts have even said they can select books based on age-appropriateness, accuracy and educational value. But if anyone selecting books is making a judgement call about which books go in the libraries based on the ideas/viewpoints within the books, it's a violation of the students' First Amendment rights.
	▲	mindslight 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		"The government" isn't necessary some monolithic centrally-commanded actor, like this vision the neofascists have been pushing. Rather, it's made up of individual people making decisions and being held accountable if those decisions are disagreeable. In this case the local librarians, who are accountable to city councils (etc), and thereby the communities they serve.