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The judges noted also that filters frequently block all pages on a site, no matter how innocent, based on a “root url.” The root urls for large sites like Yahoo or Geocities contain not only reams of educational material, but thousands of personal web pages. Likewise, according to the court, one item of disapproved content (for example, a sexuality column on Salon.com) often results in filtering the entire site.
In large part because of this massive overblocking—because of the sheer absurdity of the results produced by filters—the three-judge court struck down CIPA’s library provisions. (No suit was brought to challenge the law as applied to schools.) The judges found that there are less burdensome ways for libraries to address concerns about illegal obscenity on the Internet, and about minors’ access to material that most adults consider inappropriate for them, including “acceptable use” policies and supervision by library staff.
In reversing this lower court decision and upholding the constitutionality of CIPA in 2003, Chief Justice William Rehnquist (writing for a “plurality” of four of the nine Supreme Court justices) asserted that library patrons have no right to unfiltered Internet access. That is, according to Rehnquist, filtering is no different in principle from librarians’ decisions not to select certain books for library shelves. Moreover, Rehnquist said, because the government is providing financial aid for Internet access, it can limit the scope of the information that is made available. He added that if erroneous blocking of “completely innocuous” sites creates a First Amendment problem, “any such concerns are dispelled” by a provision in CIPA that allows libraries to disable their filters upon request, for “bona fide research or other lawful purposes.”
Supreme Court Justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer wrote separate opinions concurring in the judgment upholding CIPA. Both relied on the “disabling” provisions of the law as a way for libraries to avoid restricting adults’ access to the Internet. Kennedy emphasized that if librarians fail to unblock on request, or adults are otherwise burdened in their searches, then a lawsuit challenging CIPA “as applied” to that situation might be appropriate.