By Electronic Mail September 5, 2014 Dr. Linda Clark, Superintendent of Schools Members of the Board of Trustees West Ada School District 1303 E Central Drive Meridian, ID 83642 Re: Review of Supplemental Reading Lists Dear Superintendent Clark and Members of the Board of Trustees: We understand that the Board of Trustees has requested a review of all books on supplemental reading lists for grades 6-12 in the West Ada School District and that the committee’s report will be presented to the board on Tuesday, September 9. We write in the hope that we can assist you by providing information about the legal and policy issues implicated by removing books from such reading lists. The current review was initiated largely in response to a challenge to Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian last spring, about which we wrote you at the time, and which we understand is currently on hold while the review committee considers potential replacements. Given this context, we hope the board will take seriously the constitutional obligation not to exclude books “simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to ‘prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’” Board of Education v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 872 (1982) (plurality opinion). This is particularly applicable to supplemental reading lists, which, unlike the “ compulsory environment of the classroom,” are more like libraries, where “the regime of voluntary inquiry…holds sway.” Id . at 869. See also Campbell v. St. Tammany Parish School Board , 64 F. 3d 184, 190 (5th Cir. 1995) . Every community is home to a diversity of opinions on moral and religious questions. Removing a book in response to complaints privileges the political, moral, and/or religious beliefs of some individuals, who object to the book, over others, who do not. It is precisely this form of viewpoint discrimination by government that our constitutional system is designed to prevent. This rule is also essential to the integrity of the educational program, since there are few instructional materials that do