Illinois Librarians Help Defeat
Filtering-Mandate Bill
Some six weeks after blocking passage of a measure that would have enabled every county in Illinois to establish its own definition of obscenity, the Illinois Library Association won another legislative battle May 21: The defeat in committee of a bill that mandated school boards to block sexually explicit materials by deploying filters.
The mandate was an amendment to HB 1812, which would have required school districts to post school-performance reports on the Internet. As with previous intellectual-freedom advocacy efforts in recent years, ILA joined with a coalition of educators and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois to dissuade lawmakers from supporting the filtering amendment, Executive Director Robert P. Doyle told American Libraries.
The ILA’s May 13 legislative update encouraged library advocates to stress to legislators that “simply blocking offensive and unwanted content” will not teach youngsters how to “be accountable for safe and responsible online behavior.”
Posted May 31, 1999.
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