facilitates the speech of public broadcasters on a virtually limitless number of topics, but prohibits editorializing, see FCC v.  League of Women Voters of Cal., 468 U.S. 364 (1984), and where the government funds a wide range of legal services but restricts funding recipients from challenging welfare laws, see Legal Servs.  Corp. v.  Velazquez, 531 U.S. 533 (2001).  Similarly, where a public library opens a forum to an unlimited number of speakers around the world to speak on an unlimited number of topics, strict scrutiny applies to the library’s selective exclusions of particular speech whose content the library disfavors. 2.  Analogy to Traditional Public Fora

Application of strict scrutiny to public libraries’ use of software filters, in our view, finds further support in the extent to which public libraries’ provision of Internet access promotes First Amendment values in an analogous manner to traditional public fora, such as sidewalks and parks, in which content-based restrictions on speech are always subject to strict scrutiny.  The public library, by its very nature, is “designed for freewheeling inquiry.”  Bd. of Education v.  Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 915 (1982) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting).  As such, the library is a “mighty resource in the free marketplace of ideas,” Minarcini v.  Strongsville City Sch.  Dist., 541 F.2d 577, 582 (6th Cir. 1976), and represents a “quintessential locus of the receipt of information.”  Kreimer v.  Bureau of Police for Morristown, 958 F.2d 1242, 1255 (3d Cir. 1992); see also Sund v.  City of Wichita Falls, 121 F. Supp. 2d 530, 547 (N.D.  Tex. 2000) ("The right to receive information is vigorously enforced in the context of a public library . . . ."); cf.  Int’l Soc’y for Krishna Consciousness, Inc. v.  Lee, 505 U.S. 672, 681 (1992) ("[A] traditional public forum is property that has as ’a principal purpose . . . the free exchange of ideas.’”) (quoting Cornelius v.  NAACP Legal Def. & Educ.  Fund, 473 U.S. 788, 800 (1985)).

We acknowledge that the provision of Internet access in a public library does not enjoy the historical pedigree of streets, sidewalks, and parks as a vehicle of free expression.  Nonetheless, we believe that it shares many of the characteristics of these traditional public fora that uniquely promote First Amendment values and accordingly warrant application of strict scrutiny to any content-based restriction on speech in these fora.  Regulation of speech in streets, sidewalks, and parks is subject to the highest scrutiny not simply by virtue of history and tradition, but also because the speech-facilitating character of sidewalks and parks makes them distinctly deserving of First Amendment protection.  Many of these same speech-promoting features of the traditional public forum appear in public libraries’ provision of Internet access.  First, public libraries, like sidewalks and parks, are generally open to any member of the public who wishes to receive the speech that