232
Souter, J., dissenting
ings on the Internet otherwise available to them there, and if the only First Amendment interests raised here were those of children, I would uphold application of the Act. We have said that the governmental interest in "shielding" children from exposure to indecent material is "compelling," Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 869- 870 (1997), and I do not think that the awkwardness a child might feel on asking for an unblocked terminal is any such burden as to affect constitutionality.
Nor would I dissent if I agreed with the majority of my colleagues, see ante, at 208-209 (plurality opinion); ante, at 219 (Breyer, J., concurring in judgment); ante, at 214 (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment), that an adult library patron could, consistently with the Act, obtain an unblocked terminal simply for the asking. I realize the Solicitor General represented this to be the Government's policy, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 4-5, 11, and if that policy were communicated to every affected library as unequivocally as it was stated to us at argument, local librarians might be able to indulge the unblocking requests of adult patrons to the point of taking the curse off the statute for all practical purposes. But the Federal Communications Commission, in its order implementing the Act, pointedly declined to set a federal policy on when unblocking by local libraries would be appropriate under the statute. See In re Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service: Children's Internet Protection Act, 16 FCC Rcd. 8182, 8204, ¶ 53 (2001) ("Federally-imposed rules directing school and library staff when to disable technology protection measures would likely be overbroad and imprecise, potentially chilling speech, or otherwise confusing schools and libraries about the requirements of the statute. We leave such determinations to the local communities, whom we believe to be most knowledgeable about the varying circumstances of schools or libraries within those communities"). Moreover, the District Court expressly found that "unblocking may take days, and may be unavailable, espe-
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