Virginia Library Defends Net Filters

Staff -- School Library Journal, 3/1/1998

The Internet? Why, it's just a great big interlibrary loan system, and customers can't force libraries to give them access to Web sites--the virtual equivalent of loan requests. That's one argument made by Loudoun County (VA) Public Library in seeking to dismiss a lawsuit challenging its policy of putting filters on all Internet terminals.

The library's attorney, Ken Bass of Venable, Baetjer, and Howard, filed the motion last Monday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. It came in response to a lawsuit filed by Mainstream Loudoun, a local civil liberties group that says the policy violates the First Amendment. (See "Library Challenged On Use Of Internet Filters," SLJ Online, December 29, 1997.)

According to Bass, "no court has ever decreed that a librarian's exercise of discretion on whether to forward an interlibrary loan request is constrained in any way by the First Amendment." Elsewhere, Bass argues that the 11 individual plaintiffs in the case can't prove they were ever denied access to constitutionally protected information. That's because they never used the library's system for letting customers request a review of blocked sites, he wrote. The court will hear oral arguments in the case February 20.