3 ms·

The first amendment cannot force the government to buy specific books, but it can force the government not to not buy specific books. And sure, that's weird, b

• rayiner 1y ago
  No that’s not how the first amendment works. You’re thinking of situations where the government offers a platform to the public and can only impose viewpoint-neutral restrictions on access to the public forum. So the government couldn’t operate a government-owned sales platform for books and discriminate based on viewpoint. The books stocked in government libraries is more like the government speech doctrine: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/government_speech https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/government_speech. The government itself is allowed to have a viewpoint.
  • etchalon 1y ago
    Could the government direct librarians to purchase only Bibles, with explicit bans on purchasing the Quran?
    • rayiner 1y ago
      I assumed by “First Amendment” you were talking about the Free Speech clause, since that’s what the article is about. Government speech of course remains subject to other constitutional provisions. But the standards for these provisions are quite different. Your hypothetical raises the possibility of an Establishment Clause violation. But to prove that, it’s not enough to show that the government is discriminating as to view point. It has to be enough to amount to an establishment of religion. And of course the Free Speech Clause covers basically any subject, while other constitutional provisions are much narrower. For example, a government-run book selling platform probably couldn’t exclude people from trading books on Brutalist architecture. But a school library could have such a policy.