The American Civil Liberties Union has discovered that schools in Michigan, Texas, Pennsylvania and Virginia are using filers to block students from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender websites. The ACLU has sent letters to the schools to unlock the sites.
The press release outlines the rights of students and the reasons they should have access to the sites, “When used by a public school, programs that block all LGBT content violate First Amendment rights to free speech, as well as the Equal Access Act, which requires equal access to school resources for all extracurricular clubs. This means that gay-straight alliances and LGBT support groups must have the same access to national organizational websites that help them to function, just as other groups such as the Key Club and the chess club are able to access their national websites.
By blocking access to LGBT websites, schools deny helpful information to gay-straight alliances and other support groups that could be vital for troubled LGBT youth who either don’t have access to the Internet at home or do not feel safe accessing such information on their home computers.” -db
From a press release from the ACLU, April 11, 2011.