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 Case is Fast-Tracked for U.S. Supreme Court Review Gay Web site and a Lesbian Teen are among Plaintiffs |
Compiled by GayToday New York, New York--Acting on behalf of public libraries, library patrons and web site authors nationwide, the American Civil Liberties Union today filed a major legal challenge to a federal law that forces libraries to censor constitutionally protected speech online. "The government is choking off the free flow of information on the Internet to the library patrons who need it the most," said Ann Beeson, a member of the ACLU legal team that filed the challenge today in a U.S. District Court in Philadelphia. The ACLU's clients include a 15-year-old lesbian in Portland, Oregon, who used the local public library over the last two years to learn more about sexual orientation. Although her family has Internet access at home, she went to the library twice a week because she was afraid that her mother would discover her personal and sensitive research. Once she found resources and a welcoming queer community, she was able to come out. Among the web resources that helped her was PlanetOut, also a plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit. Under the law, passed by Congress last December, a three-judge panel appointed by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia will hear the case; any appeal of the panel's decision will go straight to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is required to hear challenges to this law. There are more than 16,000 public libraries nationwide, and 95 percent of them currently provide Internet access for their patrons. The Children's Internet Protection Act, known as "CHIPA," requires libraries that participate in certain federal programs to install "technology protection measures" on all of their Internet access terminals, regardless of whether federal programs paid for the terminals or Internet connections. In urging against passage of the law, the ACLU argued that mandatory library blocking would widen the "digital divide" that already exists between the "haves" -- those who can afford Internet access in the home -- and the "have-nots"-- low-income people, minorities, and those who live in rural areas where reliable Internet access is not always available. And the digital divide is growing, according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. In a recent report, the government agency said that whites are more likely to have access to the Internet from home than blacks or Latinos have from any location.
Yet as the ACLU complaint points out, even the makers of the blocking programs touted by the law's proponents do not claim to block only material that is "obscene, child pornography," or "harmful to minors," the kind of web sites the law targets. In addition, the programs routinely and inexplicably block sites that clearly do not fall under the categories proscribed by the law, such as a map of Disney World, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a list of all of the passengers on the Mayflower, and Seventeen magazine. "The flaws in blocking programs are not a matter of individual flaws in individual products; they are inevitable given the task and the limitations of the technology," said Chris Hansen, an ACLU Senior Staff Attorney. "Everyone from a Congressional panel to Consumer Reports to parents have found blocking programs to be unworkable." Long before blocking programs ever became an issue, libraries have made it their mission to help people find exactly the information they need, whether it is online or on paper. But "the law makes it impossible for us to do our jobs," said Ginny Cooper, Library Director at the Multnomah County Public Library in Portland, Oregon, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. The American Library Association today also filed a challenge to the law before the same Philadelphia court. The cases will likely be consolidated and heard concurrently, the ACLU said. Attorneys in the ACLU case are Beeson, Hansen and Meera Deo of the national ACLU; Stefan Presser of the ACLU of Pennsylvania; David Sobel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center; Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; Chuck Sims, Frank Scibilia, Stefanie Krause and Andy Lee, all volunteer attorneys with the law firm Proskauer Rose in New York City; and Tom Sponsler, Multnomah County Attorney. The ACLU Complaint filed is Multnomah County Public Library et al., vs. United States of America, et al. The full complaint: www.aclu.org/court/multnomah.pdf. The complete list of plaintiffs in the lawsuit: www.aclu.org/features/f032001a.html#plaintiffs |
