Kathleen Henn is a partner and Gregory Smith is an associate attorney with the law firm of Klein, Thorpe & Jenkins, Ltd., who write an article each month focusing on different aspects of library law.
“In this part of the series we will discuss the First Amendment’s role in censorship and filtering…Insofar as censorship and filtering are concerned, there are two main problems with unrestricted Internet access at libraries: first, the federal government has stated that as a matter of policy children should be protected from offensive content online. Second, unrestricted Internet access at a library can lead to lawsuits against the library if a patron is unwittingly exposed to sexually explicit material or if a library employee is exposed to such material and claims that a hostile workplace environment exists.”