226
Stevens, J., dissenting
sions to heightened scrutiny; it would make little sense to treat libraries' judgments to block online pornography any differently, when these judgments are made for just the same reason." Ante, at 208.
As the plurality recognizes, we have always assumed that libraries have discretion when making decisions regarding what to include in, and exclude from, their collections. That discretion is comparable to the " 'business of a university . . . to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.' " Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U. S. 234, 263 (1957) (Frankfurter, J., concurring in result) (citation omitted).4 As the District Court found, one of the central purposes of a library is to provide information for educational purposes: " 'Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves.' " 201 F. Supp. 2d, at 420 (quoting the American Library Association's Library Bill of Rights). Given our Nation's deep commitment "to safeguarding academic freedom" and to the "ro-bust exchange of ideas," Keyishian v. Board of Regents of Univ. of State of N. Y., 385 U. S. 589, 603 (1967), a library's exercise of judgment with respect to its collection is entitled to First Amendment protection.
A federal statute penalizing a library for failing to install filtering software on every one of its Internet-accessible computers would unquestionably violate that Amendment. Cf. Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844 (1997). I think it equally clear that the First Amendment protects libraries from being denied funds for refusing to
4 See also J. Boyer, Academic Freedom and the Modern University: The Experience of the University of Chicago 95 (2002) ("The right to speak, to write, and to teach freely is a precious right, one that the American research universities over the course of the twentieth century have slowly but surely made central to the very identity of the university in the modern world").
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