By Jenna Goodall
A new policy brief titled Fencing Out Knowledge: Impacts of the Children’s Internet Protection Act 10 Years Later1was released on June 11 by ALA’s Office of Information Technology Policy (OITP) and ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF). This study found that in an attempt to implement CIPA, many schools and libraries are filtering beyond the legal mandate and blocking access to legitimate, educational resources. The report states that this “disproportionally impacts those who can benefit most from public library and school internet access—the 60 million Americans without access to either a home broadband connection or smartphone.†Recommendations for how to remedy this situation are given at the end of the report along with a call for more research.
GLBTRT members Rae-Anne Montague and Carolyn Caywood pointed out on the GLBTRT listserv that two LGBT-focused lawsuits are mentioned in this report. The report gives examples of legal actions that were taken because of the limits of CIPA. One case mentioned is a Missouri case, PFLAG v. Camdenton R-III School District2 from 2012. A lawsuit was brought against this school district “for filtering access to websites under the category of “sexuality†that were supportive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities while permitting access to anti-LGBT websites.†A federal judge ordered the school district to remove the filters.
In a footnote, a case from 2009 is mentioned: “Another lawsuit, Franks v. Metropolitan Board of Public Education3, challenging two school districts in Tennessee for blocking access to gay educational websites, was settled out of court.â€
For more information, check out the full report4 and ALA’s press release5.
2 https://www.aclu.org/lgbt-rights/pflag-v-camdenton-r-iii-school-district
3 https://www.aclu.org/lgbt-rights_hiv-aids/franks-v-metropolitan-board-public-education-case-profile
