Libraries Must Install Internet Filters
Public libraries that receive government funding or discounts for Internet access must install software filters to block images that constitute obscenity or child pornography, the Supreme Court has ruled. The 6-3 decision in United States v. American Library Association, Inc., reverses the trial court that found the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) unconstitutional because it violated patron’s First Amendment rights.
Chief Justice Rehnquist found that “Congress has wide latitude to attach conditions to the receipt of federal assistance in order to further its policy objectives.” The federal assistance comes in the form of the E-rate program established by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that entitles qualifying libraries to buy Internet access at a discount.
The chief justice found that library staffs have traditionally considered the content in libraries by making decisions concerning the collections available for patrons. “A library’s need to exercise judgment in making collection decisions depends on its traditional role in identifying suitable and worthwhile material; it is no less entitled to play that role when it collects material from the Internet than when it collects material from any other source,” he wrote.
Justice Rehnquist dismissed the District Court’s finding that access to the Internet by library patrons qualifies as a public forum that requires First Amendment protection. “Internet access in public libraries is neither a ‘traditional’ nor a ‘designated’ public forum,” the opinion states. “First, this resource-which did not exist until quite recently-has not ‘immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind, been used for purposes of assembly, communication of thoughts between citizens, and discussing public questions. . . . Nor does Internet access in a public library satisfy our definition of a ‘designated public forum.’ To create such a forum, the government must make an affirmative choice to open up its property for use as a public forum.”
“A public library does not acquire Internet terminals in order to create a public forum for Web publishers to express themselves, anymore than it collects books in order to provide a public forum for the authors of books to speak. It provides Internet access, not to ‘encourage a diversity of views from private speakers,’ . . . but for the same reasons it offers other library resources: to facilitate research, learning, and recreational pursuits by furnishing materials of requisite and appropriate quality.”
Justice Rehnquist found that the provision in CIPA authorizing library officials to “disable” a filter “to enable access for bona fide research or other lawful purposes” was sufficient to allow adults access to blocked sites. He dismissed the District Court’s finding that patrons may be embarrassed to request that the filters be disabled, stating, “the Constitution does not guarantee the right to acquire information at a public library without any risk of embarrassment.” If a library wants to provide unfiltered access to the Internet, “they are free to do so without federal assistance,” he said.
Justice Kennedy, in a concurring opinion, found: “If, on the request of an adult user, a librarian will unblock filtered material or disable the Internet software filter without significant delay, there is little to this case.”
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Stevens found that CIPA “operates as a blunt nationwide restraint on adult access to ‘an enormous amount of valuable information’ that individual librarians cannot possibly review. . . Most of that information is constitutionally protected speech. In my view, this restraint is unconstitutional.” He found that all filtering software blocks access to a substantial number of Web sites that contain constitutionally protected speech on a wide variety of topics. Justice Stevens noted that CIPA requires that libraries install filtering software on every computer with Internet access if the library receives any discount from the E-rate program. “[I]f a library attempts to provide Internet service for even one computer through an E-rate discount, that library must put filtering software on all of its computers with Internet access, not just the one computer with E-rate discount,” he wrote. “This Court should not permit federal funds to be used to enforce this kind of broad restriction of First Amendment rights, particularly when such a restriction is unnecessary to accomplish Congress’ stated goals.”
In another dissenting opinion, Justice Souter questioned Justice Rehnquist’s finding that adult patrons could simply ask that filters be turned off. “First, the statute says only that a library ‘may’ unblock, not that it must,” he wrote. “In addition, it allows unblocking only for a ‘bona fide research or other lawful purposes,’ . . . and if the ‘lawful purposes’ criterion means anything that would not subsume and render the ‘bona fide research’ criterion superfluous, it must impose some limit on eligibility for unblocking.”
Justice Souter also challenged Justice Rehnquist’s opinion’s findings concerning the traditional mission of public libraries. “The plurality thus argues, in effect, that the traditional responsibility of public libraries has called for denying adult access to certain books, or bowdlerizing the content of what the libraries let adults see. But, in fact, the plurality’s conception of a public library’s mission has been rejected by the libraries themselves. And no library that chose to block adult access in the way mandated by the Act could claim that the history of public library practice in this country furnished an implicit gloss on First Amendment standards, allowing for blocking out anything unsuitable for adults.”