A bill to tie state funding to public libraries to the libraries' filtering of adult Websites has stalled, after the state legislature's top counsel said the bill could be unconstitutional.
Greg Chaimov said Oregon's state constitution – described as even tougher on free speech matters than even the U.S. Constitution – prohibits the state government from blocking communications on topical grounds except in limited cases like child abuse, according to USA Today.
Not so fast, said an Oregon attorney, James Leuenberger, who told the paper the propsed law, sponsored by state Rep. Betsy Close, is indeed constitutional.
"The government clearly can decide on limits of what it can or cannot say," Leuenberger told USA Today. "To the extent the library wants to accept funding from the state, the state should have the ability to tell the library what it should or should not express."
Filtering as a mandate has been controversial because filtering programs often as not block Websites having nothing to do with porn or "objectionable" material, depending on how you define "objectionable." But the Oregon Library Association's president, Connie Bennett, told USA Today the Close bill is an "unfounded mandate." In April, she testified to lawmakers that putting filters on the library she directs, the Eugene Public Library, would cost $267,000 at first and $89,000 a year to maintain.
