CIPA's disabling provisions fail to cure CIPA's lack of narrow
tailoring.
5. Conclusion; Severability


Based upon the foregoing discussion, we hold that a public
library's content-based restriction on patrons' access to speech
on the Internet is subject to strict scrutiny. Every item in a
library's print collection has been selected because library
staff, or a party to whom staff delegates the decision, deems the
content to be particularly valuable. In contrast, the Internet,
as a forum, is open to any member of the public to speak, and
hence, even when a library provides filtered Internet access, it
creates a public forum in which the vast majority of the speech
has been reviewed by neither librarians nor filtering companies.
Under public forum doctrine, where the state creates such a
forum open to any member of the public to speak on an unlimited
number of subjects, the state's decision selectively to exclude
certain speech on the basis of its content, is subject to strict
scrutiny, since such exclusions risk distorting the marketplace
of ideas that the state has created.
Application of strict scrutiny to public libraries' content-
based restrictions on their patrons' access to the Internet finds
further support in the analogy to traditional public fora, such
as sidewalks, parks, and squares, in which content-based
restrictions on speech are always subject to strict scrutiny.
Like these traditional public fora, Internet access in public
libraries uniquely promotes First Amendment values, by offering
low barriers to entry to speakers and listeners. The content of
speech on the Internet is as diverse as human thought, and the