Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling eBook

United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 196 pages of information about Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling.

Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling eBook

United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 196 pages of information about Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling.

Id. at 776.  The Court thus concluded that corporations are entitled to assert First Amendment claims as speakers, noting that “[t]he inherent worth of the speech in terms of its capacity for informing the public does not depend upon the identity of its source, whether corporation, association, union, or individual.”  Id. at 777.  In view of the foregoing, the notion that public libraries may assert First Amendment rights for the purpose of making an unconstitutional conditions claim is clearly plausible, and may well be correct.  But even if it is not, we think it plausible that they could rely on their patrons’ rights, even though their patrons are not the ones who are directly receiving the federal funding.  In similar cases, the Supreme Court has entertained unconstitutional conditions claims both by the organizations that receive federal funding and by their constituents.  See Legal Servs.  Corp. v.  Velazquez, 531 U.S. 533, 537 (2001) ("Lawyers employed by New York City LSC grantees, together with private LSC contributors, LSC indigent clients, and various state and local public officials whose governments contribute to LSC grantees, brought suit . . . to declare the restriction [on LSC lawyers’ ability advocate the amendment of or to challenge the constitutionality of existing welfare law] . . . invalid."); Rust v.  Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 181 (1991) ("Petitioners are Title X grantees and doctors who supervise Title X funds suing on behalf of themselves and their patients. . . .  Petitioners challenged the regulations on the grounds that . . . they violate the First and Fifth Amendment rights of Title X clients and the First Amendment rights of Title X health providers."); FCC v.  League of Women Voters of Cal., 468 U.S. 364, 370 n.6 (1984) (reviewing a First Amendment challenge to conditions on public broadcasters’ receipt of federal funds, in which the plaintiffs included not only the owner of a public television station, but also viewers of the station’s programs, including the League of Women Voters, and “Congressman Henry Waxman, . . . a regular listener and viewer of public broadcasting").  The question whether CIPA’s requirement that libraries use filtering software constitutes an unconstitutional condition is not an easy one.  The Supreme Court has held that it violates the First Amendment for the federal government to require public broadcasting stations that receive federal funds not to editorialize, see League of Women Voters, 468 U.S. at 366, 402; for states to subsidize “newspaper and religious, professional, trade, and sports journals,” but not “general interest magazines,” Ark.  Writers’ Project, Inc. v.  Ragland, 481 U.S. 221, 223 (1987); for a state university to subsidize student publications only on the condition that they do not “primarily promote[] or manifest[] a particular belief in or about a deity or an ultimate reality,” Rosenberger v.  Rector & Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819, 823 (1995); and for

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Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.