If the Government banned a book, wouldn't that abuse Freedom of Press/Speech?

I would certainly think so. Is there a particular incident or issue you are aware of and concerned about?

Yes it would. why do you ask?

Some guy tried to get Fahrenheit 451 banned in his sons high school. If you’ve read it you’d understand the horrible irony.

Amazing. That’s the epitome of irony. F451 is a classic.

LMAO, that’s too perfect. I’m pretty sure that public schools can ban books if they want to since the civil liberties of students are fairly limited in that environment. I don’t think there are any restrictions on the written word in the US as a nation though, even really disturbing stuff is allowed. I know there are obscenity/pornography restrictions in some places, but I’m under the impression that those restrictions are limited to images and not to the written word (although I may be wrong about that).

I’ve never understood why people want to ban F451? What is in that book that is so awful?

I can see why governments would want it banned, but why ordinary folks?

I’ve never heard of a case where the Fed has banned a book nation-wide, but if you’re looking for some irony, I would suggest The Forbidden Library. Certian districts in the state of California banned Dr. Suess’ The Lorax, because it made the logging industry look bad!

the government can only ban a book if it has a very good (compelling) reason to; usually it doesn’t.

@benjamin6 do you know of any specifics? Like books that have been successfully banned, or court cases that have upheld the state’s right to ban certain types of literature—I’d be interested to see how/where the line gets drawn.

@gorillapaws…the first amendment jurisprudence is pretty complicated (i’m certainly no expert). the general idea is that “the State may not suppress exposure to ideas – for the sole purpose of suppressing exposure to those ideas – absent sufficiently compelling reasons.” quoted from a case called Board of Education, Island Trees School District v. Pico (1982) (which said that local schools can’t remove books from shelves because they don’t like what they say). It can be found here: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=457&page=853

A national or state ban on a book would be subject to strict scrutiny: The ban would have to be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest. I doubt such a ban could exist. Schools have more latitude, of course.

school districts can freely ban books just like they can ban offensive tshirts, and the like