June 23, 2003
For Immediate Release
Contact:

Maryam Kubasek
Director of Media Relations
National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families
Religious Alliance Against Pornography
513/521-6227, ext. 111

The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling to uphold the Child Internet Protection Act is a victory for families, according to Jack Samad, senior vice president at the National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families.

The law requires libraries that receive government funding to install filtering software on computers used by minors. The National Coalition was one of several pro-family groups who signed a Friend of the Court brief urging the High Court to uphold the law.

"The majority of community libraries have all the computers in one place, with no side panels to block the view of what a user is accessing," Samad said. "Consequently, children who are using computers have an unfettered look at the pornography that some adults or even other minors are viewing."

Samad also noted that much of the pornography that is accessed via the Internet is prosecutable as obscenity. "Congress cannot allocate funding for potentially illegal material," he said.

"The bottom line is that parents should be able to take their children to or drop their kids off at a neighborhood library without worrying that they're entering a porn shop in disguise," Samad said. "This law is in the best interests of families and communities as a whole."

Dan Panetti, vice president of legal and public policy for the National Coalition, agrees that this ruling is a tremendous victory for the family, but added that there is work to be done. "This ruling does not mean that every library will have Internet filters; some libraries may choose to forgo the federal funds just so they don't have to comply with CIPA," Panetti warns. "Several states and even local communities have passed similar measures to increase the pressure on their local libraries to install protective filters - the Texas legislature just passed a statewide CIPA in the last session and the National Coalition has helped several local communities pass similar measures as well."