TN School District Dumps Filters that Block LGBTSites
RSSBy Rocco Staino -- School Library Journal, 08/17/2009
A federal court has dismissed a lawsuit against two Tennessee school districts for agreeing to stop using Internet filters that block access to information about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues (LGBT).
The Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools and Knox County Schools agreed to the settlement after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on May 19 saying that the filters were censoring important educational information. The suit was filed on behalf of three Nashville high school students, as well as a Knoxville student and high school librarian, who is also the advisor of her school's Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA).
"We are pleased that a favorable agreement has been reached with the school departments without the need for further litigation,” says Catherine Crump, an ACLU attorney. “The schools rightly realized that students should be able to access the important information available on the educational Web sites that were being blocked. This is an important step towards eliminating unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.”
As part of the agreement, the school departments have agreed to stop using "filtering software that blocks or otherwise places a barrier to student or faculty access to the LGBT sites." If the agreement is violated, the case will return to the court.
About 80 percent of Tennessee public schools use filtering software provided by Education Networks of America. The ACLU sued the Nashville and Knox school districts after a high school student discovered that the software's default setting blocked sites categorized as LGBT, including the sites of many well-known LGBT organizations. However, the filter did not block access to Web sites that urge LGBT persons to change their sexual orientation or gender identity through so-called "reparative therapy" or "ex-gay" ministries—a practice denounced as dangerous and harmful to young people by such groups as the American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association.
Tennessee law mandates Internet filtering software in public schools to restrict information that is obscene or harmful to minors. However, the "LGBT" filter category does not include material that’s sexually gratuitous and already included in the "pornography" filtering category.
"We're pleased that these schools are finally living up to their legal obligation to allow the free and open exchange of ideas and information,” says Tricia Herzfeld, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Tennessee. “Schools that censor educational information out of some misguided assumption that anything about LGBT people is automatically sexual or inappropriate are doing a disservice to their students."
