than laws imposing content-based prohibitions on speech:
It is of no moment that the statute does not impose a
complete prohibition. The distinction between laws
burdening and laws banning speech is but a matter of
degree. The Government's content-based burdens must
satisfy the same rigorous scrutiny as its content-based
bans. . . . When the purpose and design of a statute
is to regulate speech by reason of its content, special
consideration or latitude is not afforded to the
Government merely because the law can somehow be
described as a burden rather than outright suppression.


United States v. Playboy Entm't Group, Inc., 529 U.S. 803, 812,
826 (2000) (invalidating a federal law requiring cable television
operators to limit the transmission of sexually explicit
programming to the hours between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.); see
also Fabulous Assocs., 896 F.2d at 785 ("[H]ere . . . there is no
outright prohibition of indecent communication. However, the
First Amendment protects against government inhibition as well as
prohibition.") (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
Even if CIPA's disabling provisions could be perfectly
implemented by library staff every time patrons request access to
an erroneously blocked Web site, we hold that the content-based
burden that the library's use of software filters places on
patrons' access to speech suffers from the same constitutional
deficiencies as a complete ban on patrons' access to speech that
was erroneously blocked by filters, since patrons will often be
deterred from asking the library to unblock a site and patron
requests cannot be immediately reviewed. We therefore hold that