03/02/2020 UNITED STATES V. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSN., INC. and the federal and state courts before which the lawyers appeared. Public libraries, by contrast, have no comparable role that pits them against the Government, and there is no comparable assumption that they must be free of any conditions that their benefactors might attach to the use of donated funds or other assistance.7 Because public libraries’ use of Internet filtering software does not violate their patrons’ First Amendment rights, CIPA does not induce libraries to violate the Constitution, and is a valid exercise of Congress’ spending power. Nor does CIPA impose an unconstitutional condition on public libraries. Therefore, the judgment of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania is Reversed. Notes 1. The Children’s Internet Protection Act: Hearing on S. 97 before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, 106th Cong., 1st Sess., 49 (1999) (prepared statement of Bruce Taylor, President and Chief Counsel, National Law Center for Children and Families). See also Obscene Material Available Via The Internet: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection of the House Committee on Commerce, 106th Cong., 2d Sess. 1, 27 (2000) (citing D. Burt, Dangerous Access, 2000 Edition: Uncovering Internet Pornography in America’s Libraries (2000)) (noting more than 2,000 incidents of patrons, both adults and minors, using library computers to view online pornography, including obscenity and child pornography). 2. Justice Stevens misapprehends the analysis we must perform to determine whether CIPA exceeds Congress’ authority under the Spending Clause. He asks and answers whether it is constitutional for Congress to “impose [CIPA’s filtering] requirement” on public libraries, instead of “allowing local decisionmakers to tailor their responses to local problems.” Post, at 1 (dissenting opinion). But under our wellestablished Spending Clause precedent, that is not the proper inquiry. Rather, as the District Court correctly recognized, 201 F. Supp. 2d 401, 453 (ED Pa. 2002), we must ask whether the condition that Congress requires “would … be unconstitutional” if performed by the library itself. Dole, 830 U.S., at 210. CIPA does not directly regulate private conduct; rather, Congress has exercised its Spending Power by specifying conditions on the receipt of federal funds. Therefore, Dole provides the appropriate framework for assessing CIPA’s constitutionality. 3. Even if appellees had proffered more persuasive evidence that public libraries intended to create a forum for speech by connecting to the Internet, we would hesitate to import “the public forum doctrine … wholesale into” the context of the Internet. Denver Area Ed. Telecommunications Consortium, Inc. v. FCC, 518 U.S. 727, 749 (1996) (opinion of Breyer, J.). “[W]e are wary of the notion that a partial analogy in one context, for which we have developed doctrines, can compel a full range of decisions in such a new and changing area.” Ibid. The dissents agree with the District Court that less restrictive alternatives to filtering software would suffice to https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-361.ZO.html 9/13