Demand Letter Sent As Part Of Organization’s “Don’t Filter Me” Initiative
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Dotty Griffith, Public Education Director, ACLU of Texas, (512) 923-1909; [email protected]
Robyn Shepherd, ACLU national, (212) 519-7829 or 549-2666; [email protected]
AUSTIN – The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of Texas demanded that school officials of Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District (CISD) stop viewpoint-based censorship of web content geared toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities. Read the letter here.
The ACLU sent similar letters to schools in three other states today as part of the organization’s national “Don’t Filter Me” initiative, which seeks to combat illegal censorship of pro-LGBT information on public school computer systems.
Jacob Ratliff, 18, was researching a news story for a current events class when he ran up against web filtering software at Goose Creek Memorial High School near Houston. “I was trying to find information for a current events assignment about how Chik-Fil-A is being boycotted for donating to some anti-gay organizations, but all of the sites that came up on Google News were blocked,” said Ratliff, a high school senior. “For something that’s in the news and that people are talking about to be blocked like that makes it feel like my school is putting a political slant on our Internet access, and that makes me really uncomfortable,” he added.
The campaign asks students to check to see if web content geared toward LGBT communities – a frequent target of censorship in schools – is blocked by their schools’ web browsers, and then report instances of censorship to the ACLU LGBT Project.
“Public schools have a duty to provide students with viewpoint-neutral access to the Internet,” said Lisa Graybill, Legal Director of the ACLU of Texas. “When used by a public school, programs that block all LGBT content violate First Amendment rights to free speech, as well as the Equal Access Act, which requires equal access to school resources for all extracurricular clubs.”
This means that gay-straight alliances and LGBT support groups must have the same access to national organizational websites that help them to function, just as other groups such as the Key Club and the chess club are able to access their national websites.
“By blocking access to LGBT websites, schools deny helpful information to gay-straight alliances and other support groups that could be vital for troubled LGBT youth who either don’t have access to the Internet at home or do not feel safe accessing such information on their home computers,” said Manuel Quinto-Pozos, Staff Attorney for the ACLU of Texas.
“There is no legitimate reason why any public school should be using an anti-LGBT filter,” said Joshua Block, Staff Attorney with the ACLU LGBT Project. “This is not a case where overbroad filters are accidentally filtering out LGBT websites. These filters are designed to discriminate and are programmed specifically to target LGBT-related content that would not otherwise be blocked as sexually explicit or inappropriate.
A video showing students how to test whether or not their school is illegally filtering content, and providing instructions for reporting censorship can be seen here.
Students who want to report unconstitutional web filtering at their schools can fill out a form here.
More information on the ACLU’s work on LGBT school issues can be found here.
