224
Stevens, J., dissenting
gress.3 The plurality does not reject any of those findings. Instead, "[a]ssuming that such erroneous blocking presents constitutional difficulties," it relies on the Solicitor General's assurance that the statute permits individual librarians to disable filtering mechanisms whenever a patron so requests. Ante, at 209. In my judgment, that assurance does not cure the constitutional infirmity in the statute.
Until a blocked site or group of sites is unblocked, a patron is unlikely to know what is being hidden and therefore whether there is any point in asking for the filter to be removed. It is as though the statute required a significant part of every library's reading materials to be kept in unmarked, locked rooms or cabinets, which could be opened only in response to specific requests. Some curious readers would in time obtain access to the hidden materials, but
3 "Indeed, federal or state mandates in this area are unnecessary and unwise. Locally designed solutions are likely to best meet local circumstances. Local decision makers and library boards, responding to local concerns and the prevalence of the problem in their own libraries, should decide if minors' Internet access requires filters. They are the persons in the best position to judge local community standards for what is and is not obscene, as required by the Miller [v. California, 413 U. S. 15 (1973)] test. Indeed, one nationwide solution is not needed, as the problems are local and, to some extent, uniquely so. Libraries in rural communities, for instance, have reported much less of a problem than libraries in urban areas. A library in a rural community with only one or two computers with Internet access may find that even the limited filtering advocated here provides little or no additional benefit. Further, by allowing the nation's public libraries to develop their own approaches, they may be able to develop a better understanding of what methods work well and what methods add little or nothing, or are even counter-productive. Imposing a mandatory nationwide solution may well impede developing truly effective approaches that do not violate the First Amendment. The federal and state governments can best assist this effort by providing libraries with sufficient funding to experiment with a variety of constitutionally permissible approaches." Laughlin, Sex, Lies, and Library Cards: The First Amendment Implications of the Use of Software Filters to Control Access to Internet Pornography in Public Libraries, 51 Drake L. Rev. 213, 279 (2003).
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