Feds: Hold Off on Filters
Staff -- School Library Journal, 6/1/2001
If you're in a library receiving e-rate funds, you don't have to install Internet filters until July of next year. That's the latest word from the federal government on the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), the law requiring filters in libraries and schools that receive the e-rate telecommunications discount.
The constitutionality of the law is being challenged by the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The two organizations pressed the government for clarification on the matter last month so they could decide whether to seek a preliminary injunction preventing the law from going into effect. But, says Theresa Chmara, an attorney for ALA, "the government has given us an assurance that basically made it unnecessary" to seek an injunction.
According to Chmara, libraries receiving e-rate funds this July must only certify to the government in October that they are starting the process of evaluating their options for the next funding year. Then they would have to install filters by July 2002. By that point, Chmara says, opponents hope the law is overturned.
