United States V. American Library Association - Dissent

Dissent

Justice John Paul Stevens dissented submitting that CIPA unlawfully conditioned receipt of government funding on the restriction of First Amendment rights because CIPA denied the libraries any discretion in judging the merits of the blocked websites.

Justice David Souter (with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joining) dissented submitting that blocking an adult's access to material harmful to minors is a constitutionally-impermissible content-based restriction on the communication of material in the library's control. Justice Souter argued that strict scrutiny ought to have been applied, and that CIPA would fail this test because it was not narrowly tailored enough to achieve the government's compelling interest in protecting minors from accessing obscene images without infringing the fundamental rights of adult library patrons.