ACLU sues Missouri school district over internet filtering

In the latest development in its national “Don’t Filter Me” campaign, which aims to stop schools from blocking students’ access to educational websites about gay, lesbian, and transgender issues, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Aug. 15 against a Missouri school district.

The civil rights organization said in a news release that the lawsuit was filed in federal court in Jefferson City, Mo., against the Camdenton R-III School District in central Missouri on behalf of organizations whose websites are blocked by the filter. Those organizations include the Matthew Shepard Foundation and Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays National, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.

The ACLU of Eastern Missouri legal director Tony Rothert said in a news release that every effort had been made to inform the district that its internet filtering software “illegally denies students access to important educational information and resources on discriminatory grounds.” Rothert added during a telephone interview with the Associated Press (AP) that the district has unblocked a few websites, but dozens more remain blocked.

Superintendent Tim Hadfield told a local newspaper last week that the district doesn’t feel its internet filtering system has violated students’ rights.

“We do specifically block sites that are inappropriate and will continue to do so,” he said.

A phone message left for Hadfield by the AP on Aug. 15 wasn’t immediately returned.

The ACLU first addressed the issue in 2009 when it filed suit over access to LGBT websites in the Knoxville and Nashville school districts in Tennessee.

The districts ultimately agreed to stop using internet filtering software to block those sites.

Since then, the organization has received numerous complaints that schools are continuing to block LGBT sites, prompting a national campaign, said Joshua Block, the staff attorney for the ACLU’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project. The lawsuit filed Aug. 15 is the first directly tied to that campaign.