California Mom Seeking Filters in Library
Gets Another Day in Court
California’s First District Court of Appeal heard oral arguments January 23 in the appeal of a Concord woman seeking to force the Livermore Public Library to install filtering software on children’s-area machines. “We need to do a little more to protect children from themselves than to protect adults from themselves,” plaintiff attorney Michael Millen told the three-judge panel, according to the January 24 San Francisco Chronicle. “What’s a library to do?” Justice Patricia Sepulveda replied, noting that libraries that restrict access can “get sued, and if they don’t, they get sued.”
In Kathleen R. v. Livermore, which was dismissed in January 2000, Kathleen R. sought an injunction to stop the library from acting as a “public nuisance” after her 12-year-old son downloaded images of people engaged in sex acts from LPL computers. However, appeals Justice Timothy Reardon noted that the boy hadn’t stumbled upon the images, but had deliberately sought them out.
A ruling on whether to reinstate the case is expected within 90 days.
Posted January 29, 2001.
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