UDPATED: Northfield Schools Under Fire from ACLU for Internet Filtering of LGBT Content

Northfield Public Schools is one of many districts coming under fire from the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota for allegedly filtering LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual) content on district computers.

But, according to Superintendent Chris Richardson, the problem has been resolved.

After being notified by Northfield students that they couldn’t access LGBT resources, the ACLU sent a letter this week to the district calling for the filter to be lifted and filed a request to ask how the filters were put in place. The ALCU says Northfield uses software called Lightspeed, which contains a filter called “education.lifestyles,” defined as “Education about lifestyles—gay, lesbian, alternate.”

The district has several filters in place to block access to many sites, most notably pornographic websites and social media sites like Facebook, Richardson said.

He said when Lightspeed was installed in 2009, the technician must have blocked the "education.lifestyles" section, unbeknownst to district officials.

“We’ve had no kids questioning or complaining (about it),” Richardson said. “We weren’t aware it was blocked.”

Richardson said had district officials been notified, they would have fixed the issue. He said they didn't know of the issue until a statement from the ACLU-MN was released.

"LGBT youth face a lot of challenges growing up in today’s society. The websites that are being filtered by Northfield are important resources for LGBT teens to go to for support and help, it is unfortunate that they would block these sites,” said ACLU-MN attorney Teresa Nelson in the statement.

Richardson agreed, saying Northfield is supportive of all its students, and a simple phone call would have fixed the issue.

"It was pretty clear there was no intentional desire (there)," he said of the filter.

According to the Northfield School Board policy for use of technology and telecommunications systems by students, computer access is a “privilege and can be revoked at any time.”

Policy 524.2 also says:

• Access to the Internet will be for specific educational purposes only, and students will not use the school district technology resources to access, display, store, upload, download, distribute or print pornographic, obscene or sexually explicit materials.

• Students will not use the school district technology resources to access, display, store, upload, download, distribute or print materials that advocate violence, harassment or discrimination or are disruptive in any way.

• Students will not use school district technology resources for commercial purposes, game playing, political lobbying or solicitation of any kind.

• Each student shall be aware that data and other materials in files maintained on school district property may be subject to review, disclosure or discovery under State and Federal legislation, including the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act.

• The School District can and will monitor the online activities of all employees and students, and employ “filtering” protection measures during any use by employees and/or students. The “filtering” measures are intended to block Internet sites that contain violent, obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit materials. The district will comply with any and all state and federal requirements around Internet filtering for student use. The use of this software does not guarantee that students or staff will not be able to obtain objectionable or pornographic materials over the Internet, but the chances have been minimized.

The ACLU says it’s had successful campaigns to remove similar filters in a Kansas City school district and has reached out to other districts in Virginia, Ohio and New Jersey.

“There is no legitimate reason why any public school should be using an anti-LGBT filter,” Joshua Block of the ACLU LGBT Project said. “This is not a case where overbroad filters are accidentally filtering out LGBT websites. These filters are designed to discriminate and are programmed specifically to target LGBT-related content that would not otherwise be blocked as sexually explicit or inappropriate. Public schools have a duty to provide students with viewpoint-neutral access to the Internet.”