A "pornography advocate" for the Justice Department?

Ogden's summary:

"This case may appear to present an issue about the availability of a narrow category of expression ("harmful to minors" material) through a single medium (the Internet), but in fact it implicates an issue of great importance to the intellectual and political life of our nation: the role of the public library, long a vital center for the acquisition of information and the exploration of ideas. As a condition of receiving federal funds, Congress has -- with the Children's Internet Protecttion Act ...("CIPA") -- insisted that public libraries affirmatively censor constitutionally-protected material. By demanding that libraries be censors and devote resources -- not to facilitating but to interfering with patrons' pursuit of information and ideas, Congress has subverted the role of libraries and public libraries and violated the First Amendment rights of library patrons.

"Public libraries exist to meet the information needs of their patrons, not to censor information in accordance with a predetermined agenda. Imposition of mandatory filtering on public libraries impairs the ability of librarians to fulfill the purpose of public libraries -- namely, assisting library patrons in their quest for information -- and distorts public libraries' traditional function by interfering with local control over the management of their resources. Mandatory filtering also imposes unwarranted restrictions on the use of the Internet, a library resource not subject to spatial and budgetary constraints that typically restrict print collections. Far from being "just another collections decision," mandatory censorship of the Internet proscribes access to constitutionally-protected expresssive materials without any resource-scarcity justification. Moreover, through ingenuity and adherence to the long-established values that guide the profession of library science, public libraries have developed techniques for protecting minors from harmful materials on the Internet that are more effective than mandatory filtering.

For all these reasons, CIPA is unconstitutional. Congress cannot condition public libraries' receipt of funds on their agreement to violate the First Amendment rights of library patrons. The public library is the quintessential forum for the receipt of information. With respect to a medium like the Internet that is subject to virtually no resource limitations, content-based exclusions of constitutionally-protected material are subject to strict scrutiny. CIPA cannot survive such scrutiny because mandatory filtering is not narrowly-tailored to achieve a compelling purpose. Specifically, CIPA is both grossly overinclusive and significantly underinclusive in the matrerial it censors, and prohibits access by adults to information they have a constitutional right to receive. Less restrictive approaches, including those already used by public libraries throughout the United States, are as or more effective in protecting children while interfering far less with the rights of adults."

Libraries often properly engage in the selection of materials, either as a matter of necessity (i.e., due to the scarcity of resources) or by design (i.e., in accordance with collection development policies)...

The Act's restrictions satisfy these constitutional demands. The Act seeks to restrict access to obscenity, child pornography, and, in respect to access by minors, material that is comparably harmful. These objectives are "legitimate," and indeed often "compelling." ...

the Act contains an important exception that limits the speech-related harm that "overblocking" might cause. As the plurality points out, the Act allows libraries to permit any adult patron access to an "overblocked" Web site; the adult patron need only ask a librarian to unblock the specific Web site or, alternatively, ask the librarian, "Please disable the entire filter."...

The Act does impose upon the patron the burden of making this request. But it is difficult to see how that burden (or any delay associated with compliance) could prove more onerous than traditional library practices associated with segregating library materials in, say, closed stacks, or with interlibrary lending practices that require patrons to make requests that are not anonymous and to wait while the librarian obtains the desired materials from elsewhere....

Given the comparatively small burden that the Act imposes upon the library patron seeking legitimate Internet materials, I cannot say that any speech-related harm that the Act may cause is disproportionate when considered in relation to the Act's legitimate objectives. I therefore agree with the plurality that the statute does not violate the First Amendment.