Discusses a Kansas court case that addressed First Amendment rights of students when a book was banned from a school library. Topics include motivation of school board members, students' rights to information versus denial of access to ideas, viewpoint discrimination, and educational suitability. A sidebar presents viewpoints of the book's author.…

Explores issues surrounding hate crime legislation and prosecution, with emphasis on motivation and first amendment issues. Hate crime legislation attempts to import the civil rights model into criminal law, but the very existence of the hate crime label raises social and political stakes in intergroup crimes. (SLD)