by Rex Wockner
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
The American Civil Liberties Union and Yale Law School have launched a campaign called "Don't Filter Me" against Web censorship by public high schools.
The campaign urges students to check if their school is blocking LGBT content and to report such incidents at http://action.aclu.org/dontfilterme.
"Students may not realize that it actually is illegal for their schools to block educational and political content geared toward the LGBT community," said ACLU attorney Joshua Block. "We hope to inform students of their rights, and let them know there is something they can do if their school is engaging in censorship."
Blocking such content can violate the First Amendment and the federal Equal Access Act, which requires equal access to school resources for all extracurricular clubs, including gay-straight alliances and LGBT support groups, the ACLU said.
"Some schools have improperly configured their Web filters to block access to websites for LGBT rights organizations such as the GSA Network and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, but allow access to sites that condemn homosexuality or urge LGBT people to try to change their sexual orientation," the organization said. "Some schools have also improperly configured their Web filters to block news items pertaining to issues like 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'"
A video showing students how to check if their school is illegally filtering content can be found at http://www.tinyurl.com/filttest.
