Parties: United States v. Am. Library Ass'n
Date: 2003-06-23
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Paragraph: 29 - That some people may be too embarassed to ask for access to blocked Internet sites is not an infringement of their speech rights.N273* But the Constitution does not guarantee the right to acquire information at a public library without any risk of embarrassment.
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Paragraph: 85 - N119* "The policy of the First Amendment favors dissemination of information and opinion, and N120* the guarantees of freedom of speech and press were not designed to prevent the censorship of the press merely, but any action of the government by means of which it might prevent such free and general discussion of public matters as seems absolutely essential."
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Paragraph: 90 - The upshot was a growing understanding that a librarian's job was to guarantee that "all people had access to all ideas," Geller, supra, at 156, and by the end of the 1930s, librarians' "basic position in opposition to censorship [had] emerged," Krug & Harvey, ALA and Intellectual Freedom: A Historical Overview, in Intellectual Freedom Manual, pp. xi, xv (American Library Association 1974) (hereinafter Intellectual Freedom Manual)
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Paragraph: 95 - Thus, there is no preacquisition scarcity rationale to save library Internet blocking from treatment as censorship, and no support for it in the historical development of library practice. To these two reasons to treat blocking differently from a decision declining to buy a book, a third must be added. Quite simply, we can smell a rat when a library blocks material already in its control, just as we do when a library removes books from its shelves for reasons having nothing to do with wear and tear, obsolescence, or lack of demand. Content-based blocking and removal tell us something that mere absence from the shelves does not.
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Paragraph: 1 - N266* Internet access in public libraries is neither a "traditional" nor a "designated" public forum. See, e. g., Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Defense & Ed. Fund, Inc., 473 U. S. 788, 802-803. Unlike the "Student Activity Fund" at issue in Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U. S. 819, 834, Internet terminals are not acquired by a library in order to create a public forum for Web publishers to express themselves. Rather, a library provides such access for the same reasons it offers other library resources: to facilitate research, learning, and recreational pursuits by furnishing materials of requisite and appropriate quality. The fact that a library reviews and affirmatively chooses to acquire every book in its collection, but does not review every Web site that it makes available, is not a constitutionally relevant distinction. The decisions by most libraries to exclude pornography from their print collections are not subjected to heightened scrutiny; it would make little sense to treat libraries' judgments to block online pornography any differently. Moreover, because of the vast quantity of material on the Internet and the rapid pace at which it changes, libraries cannot possibly segregate, item by item, all the Internet material that is appropriate for inclusion from all that is not. While a library could limit its Internet collection to just those sites it found worthwhile, it could do so only at the cost of excluding an enormous amount of valuable information that it lacks the capacity to review. Given that tradeoff, it is entirely reasonable for public libraries to reject that approach and instead exclude certain categories of content, without making individualized judgments that everything made available has requisite and appropriate quality. Concerns over filtering software's tendency to erroneously "overblock" access to constitutionally protected speech that falls outside the categories software users intend to block are dispelled by the ease with which patrons may have the filtering software disabled.
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Paragraph: 29 - Like the District Court, the dissents fault the tendency of filtering software to "overblock" —that is, to erroneously block access to constitutionally protected speech that falls outside the categories that software users intend to block. See post, at 221-222 (opinion of Stevens, J.); post, at 233-234 (opinion of Souter, J.). Due to the software's limitations, "[m]any erroneously blocked [Web] pages contain content that is completely innocuous for both adults and minors, and that no rational person could conclude matches the filtering companies' category definitions, such as `pornography' or `sex.'" 201 F. Supp. 2d, at 449. Assuming that such erroneous blocking presents constitutional difficulties, any such concerns are dispelled by the ease with which patrons may have the filtering software disabled. When a patron encounters a blocked site, he need only ask a librarian to unblock it or (at least in the case of adults) disable the filter.
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Paragraph: 30 - Appellees argue that CIPA imposes an unconstitutional condition on libraries that receive E-rate and LSTA subsidies by requiring them, as a condition on their receipt of federal funds, to surrender their First Amendment right to provide the public with access to constitutionally protected speech. The Government counters that this claim fails because Government entities do not have First Amendment rights. See Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v. Democratic National Committee, 412 U. S. 94, 139 (1973) (Stewart, J., concurring)N267* ("The First Amendment protects the press from governmental interference; it confers no analogous protection on the government");
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Paragraph: 58 - In my judgment, a statutory blunderbuss that mandates this vast amount of "overblocking" abridges the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.
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Paragraph: 59 - The effect of the overblocking is the functional equivalent of a host of individual decisions excluding hundreds of thousands of individual constitutionally protected messages from Internet terminals located in public libraries throughout the Nation. Neither the interest in suppressing unlawful speech nor the interest in protecting children from access to harmful materials justifies this overly broad restriction on adult access to protected speech. N268* "The Government may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech."
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Paragraph: 72 - As described above, all filtering software erroneously blocks access to a substantial number of Web sites that contain constitutionally protected speech on a wide variety of topics. See id., at 446-447 (describing erroneous blocking of speech on churches and religious groups, on politics and government, on health issues, on education and careers, on sports, and on travel). Moreover, there are "frequent instances of underblocking," id., at 448, that is, instances in which filtering software did not prevent access to Web sites with depictions that fall within what CIPA seeks to block access to. In short, the message conveyed by the use of filtering software is not that all speech except that which is prohibited by CIPA is supported by the Government, but rather that all speech that gets through the software is supported by the Government.
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