Although I certainly agree that the principle of free speech is at issue in the two cases about government speech, I have some practical questions about what limiting the scope of government speech will do.
For school library books, does that mean I would have the right to have books of my choice in school libraries? Could I successfully sue a school to force it to include Mein Kampf in their collection? What happens when they run out of space and need to reduce the size of the collection? Do they need to select books at random, or perhaps by something like student popularity, when removing them? If a school already had Mein Kampf in its collection and the librarian decided that it'd be the first book to go when they ran out of space, would that be illegal content-based discrimination?
As far as teaching goes, if a biology teacher were to decide thay they'd prefer to teach creationism instead of evolution, would the state have a recourse? What if the school district itself replaced evolution with creationism in their curriculum? Would the state's hands be tied?
Edit: Teaching creationism would actually violate the Establishment Clause, so replace that example with rejecting genetics in favor of Lysenkoism.
Although I certainly agree that the principle of free speech is at issue in the two cases about government speech, I have some practical questions about what limiting the scope of government speech will do.
For school library books, does that mean I would have the right to have books of my choice in school libraries? Could I successfully sue a school to force it to include Mein Kampf in their collection? What happens when they run out of space and need to reduce the size of the collection? Do they need to select books at random, or perhaps by something like student popularity, when removing them? If a school already had Mein Kampf in its collection and the librarian decided that it'd be the first book to go when they ran out of space, would that be illegal content-based discrimination?
As far as teaching goes, if a biology teacher were to decide thay they'd prefer to teach creationism instead of evolution, would the state have a recourse? What if the school district itself replaced evolution with creationism in their curriculum? Would the state's hands be tied?
Edit: Teaching creationism would actually violate the Establishment Clause, so replace that example with rejecting genetics in favor of Lysenkoism.