The government argues that, in providing Internet access,
public libraries do not create a public forum, since public
libraries may reserve the right to exclude certain speakers from
availing themselves of the forum. Accordingly, the government
contends that public libraries' restrictions on patrons' Internet
access are subject only to rational basis review.
Plaintiffs respond that the government's ability to restrict
speech on its own property, as in the case of restrictions on
Internet access in public libraries, is not unlimited, and that
the more widely the state facilitates the dissemination of
private speech in a given forum, the more vulnerable the state's
decision is to restrict access to speech in that forum. We agree
with the plaintiffs that public libraries' content-based
restrictions on their patrons' Internet access are subject to
strict scrutiny. In providing even filtered Internet access,
public libraries create a public forum open to any speaker around
the world to communicate with library patrons via the Internet on
a virtually unlimited number of topics. Where the state provides
access to a "vast democratic forum[]," Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S.
844, 868 (1997), open to any member of the public to speak on
subjects "as diverse as human thought," id. at 870 (internal
quotation marks and citation omitted), the state's decision
selectively to exclude from the forum speech whose content the
state disfavors is subject to strict scrutiny, as such exclusions
risk distorting the marketplace of ideas that the state has
facilitated. Application of strict scrutiny finds further
support in the extent to which public libraries' provision of
Internet access uniquely promotes First Amendment values in a