Intellectual Property Law

ACLU Sues School Districts for Blocking Gay-Rights Web Sites

By David Kravets

Two school districts representing thousands of Tennessee students were sued Tuesday for blocking access to web sites discussing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, but are not filtering sites advocating “reparative” therapy to change their lifestyle away from being gay.

Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union asked the Knox County Schools and Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools to stop the practice. Evidently, they didn’t. So the ACLU made good on its promise, and sued the districts in federal court on Tuesday.

“Not only does defendants’ blocking policy discriminate on the basis of content in violation of the First Amendment, the policy further constitutes unlawful viewpoint discrimination,” the suit said. “Under the defendants’ policy, students may access websites that promote anti-gay views and that advocate that persons should change their sexual orientation through so-called “reparative therapy,” but not the web sites of organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, which is one of the largest civil rights organizations in the United States working to achieve equality under the law for LGBT persons.”

The blocked sites include the Human Rights Campaign, Marriage Equality USA, the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, the Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and Dignity USA. Unblocked sites include National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, People Can Change, The Americans For Truth Against Homosexuality and the Traditional Values Coalition.

In our previous story, Metropolitan Nashville Schools maintained that Education Networks of America, the two districts’ filtering company, picks what sites to block. For its part, ENA said it was up to the schools to choose what is filtered and abide by the Children’s Internet Protection Act.

Metropolitan Nashville Schools did not immediately respond for comment. Nashville Public Schools could not be immediately reached, but declined comment last month when the ACLU asked the district to stop the practice in question.

Students and a librarian challenging the filtering are the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Click here to see a video of one of the students.

See Also:

• Pro-Gay Sites Filtered From Tennessee Students
• No ISP Filtering Under New RIAA Copyright Strategy
• Former Prosecutor: ISP Content Filtering Might be a ‘Five Year …
• New Lobbying Group Calls for Internet Filtering
• MPAA Urges Obama to Embrace Internet Filtering

Full post as published by Threat Level on May 19, 2009 (boomark / email).