When Jeri McGiverin retired from teaching high school English in Virginia, she hoped to devote more time to writing, skiing, traveling, and piano playing. Instead, she was drawn into a series of bitter free-speech disputes in her native Loudoun County, an area west of Washington, DC, that is making the transition from horse country to bedroom community. McGiverin, who has two grown children, is president of Mainstream Loudoun, a nonprofit grassroots organization formed to oppose local efforts to control library content and public school curricula.
McGiverin's organization is embroiled in a groundbreaking battle over Internet access in public libraries. Last fall Loudoun County's board of library trustees adopted one of the most restrictive Internet-use policies in the country, mandating the use of filtering software (even for adult library users) and forbidding librarians to turn the software off under any circumstances.
To fight the policy, Mainstream Loudoun teamed up with People For the American Way and civil liberties attorney Robert Corn-Revere to file the first lawsuit testing the constitutionality of filtering software in public libraries. The American Civil Liberties Union later joined the case independently. For its part, the Loudoun County library board hired the nationally known litigation firm of Venable, Baetjer, Howard & Civiletti to argue its case after declining an offer of assistance from Communications Decency Act coauthor Bruce Taylor.
"Adult library users should have the option of selecting filtered or unfiltered access to the Internet without asking a librarian," McGiverin says. "In the guise of protecting them, the library board has denied Loudoun citizens their First Amendment rights."
This article originally appeared in the April issue of Wired magazine.
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