the filtering companies to review.  Put simply, the state cannot be said to be exercising editorial discretion permitted under the First Amendment when it indiscriminately facilitates private speech whose content it makes no effort to examine.  Cf.  Bell, supra, at 226 ("[C]ourts should take a much more jaundiced view of library policies that block Internet access to a very limited array of subjects than they take of library policies that reserve Internet terminals for very limited use.").  While the First Amendment permits the government to exercise editorial discretion in singling out particularly favored speech for subsidization or inclusion in a state-created forum, we believe that where the state provides access to a “vast democratic forum[],” Reno, 521 U.S. at 868, open to any member of the public to speak on subjects “as diverse as human thought,” id. at 870, and then selectively excludes from the forum certain speech on the basis of its content, such exclusions are subject to strict scrutiny.  These exclusions risk fundamentally distorting the unique marketplace of ideas that public libraries create when they open their collections, via the Internet, to the speech of millions of individuals around the world on a virtually limitless number of subjects.

A public library’s content-based restrictions on patrons’ Internet access thus resemble the content-based restrictions on speech subsidized by the government, whether through direct funding or through the creation of a designated public forum, that the Supreme Court has subjected to strict scrutiny, as discussed above in Section IV.C.  Although the government may subsidize a particular message representing the government’s viewpoint without having to satisfy strict scrutiny, see Rust v.  Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173 (1991), strict scrutiny applies to restrictions that selectively exclude particular viewpoints from a public forum designed to facilitate a wide range of viewpoints, see Rosenberger v.  Rector & Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819 (1995).  Similarly, although the state’s exercise of editorial discretion in selecting particular speakers for participation in a state-sponsored forum is subject to rational basis review, see Ark.  Educ.  Television Comm’n v.  Forbes, 523 U.S. 666 (1998), selective exclusions of particular speakers from a forum otherwise open to any member of the public to speak are subject to strict scrutiny, see City of Madison Joint School Dist.  No. 8 v.  Wis.  Employment Relations Comm’n, 429 U.S. 167 (1976).  And while the government may, subject only to rational basis review, make content-based decisions in selecting works of artistic excellence to subsidize, see NEA v.  Finley, 524 U.S. 569 (1998), the Supreme Court has applied heightened scrutiny where the government opens a general-purpose municipal theater for use by the public, but selectively excludes disfavored content, see Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v.  Conrad, 420 U.S. 546 (1975), where the government