Students Alerted ACLU To Illegal Filtering As Part Of Organization’s “Don’t Filter Me” Initiative
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Dotty Griffith, ACLU of Texas, 512-478-7300 x 106; [email protected]
AUSTIN – The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of Texas receive confirmation that school officials at Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District (CISD) in Baytown and Eagle Mountain-Saginaw Independent School District (ISD) in Fort Worth have agreed to stop viewpoint-based censorship of web content geared toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities. The ACLU had sent demand letters to the districts 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.
The campaign asked 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. Students in both school districts contacted the ACLU after discovering that websites such as the Gay-Straight Alliance Network and sites that provide resources for LGBT youth in crisis were being blocked.
After receiving the letters, the school districts discovered that their filtering software had been configured to block educational LGBT-related information that is not sexually explicit in any way. These anti-LGBT filters can be removed without impairing the schools' ability to block pornographic or sexually explicit content as required by federal law.
“No student should be denied access to legitimate information, and Goose Creek and Eagle Mountain-Saginaw school officials should be commended for doing the right thing and taking prompt action to restore that access,” said Lisa Graybill, Legal Director of the ACLU of Texas. “All schools should ensure that their web filters are configured to provide students with viewpoint-neutral access to the Internet.”
Earlier this year, the North Kansas City School District unblocked websites identified by the ACLU and removed the filter that screened the sites out in the first place after a student reported illegal filtering. Another school in New Jersey voluntarily removed its anti-LGBT filter after receiving student complaints and an open records request from the ACLU.
The ACLU is investigating complaints about illegal filtering at several other Texas schools and plans to send additional letters in the coming weeks.
Goose Creek, which uses filtering software provided by Websense, had enabled a filter called "Gay or Lesbian or Bisexual Interest." Eagle Mountain-Saginaw, which uses filtering software provided by Lightspeed, had enabled a filter called "education.lifestyles."
“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. “Software companies need to make schools understand that these products are programmed specifically to target LGBT-related content that would not otherwise be blocked as inappropriate, and that these types of filters are not required by law.”
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.
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: www.aclu.org/lgbt-rights/dont-filter-me
Students who want to report unconstitutional web filtering at their schools can fill out a form at: action.aclu.org/dontfilterme
More information on the ACLU’s work on LGBT school issues can be found here:
www.aclu.org/safeschools
www.aclutx.org
