SAN FRANCISCO - School administrators, along with students, teachers, parents, and school librarians, in San Francisco, New York, and Boston will speak out on September 18 against federal mandates for Internet blocking or filtering software in public schools.

School communities nationwide are urging repeal of the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) which requires public schools and libraries receiving certain federal funds or discounts to install a "technology protection measure" to block Internet access to materials that are "harmful to minors."

A federal district court has already struck down a similar portion of the CIPA law that required libraries to install filters because the court found that filtering products unsuccessfully blocked access to materials that are harmful to minors while abridging the free speech of library patrons by overblocking constitutionally protected materials. The government has appealed the library decision to the Supreme Court. The schools portion of the CIPA law remains in force.

EFF and OPG will announce results of a study demonstrating thousands of sites inappropriately blocked by two of the most widely used Internet filters based on topic searches of state-mandated school curriculums from three states.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Online Policy Group (OPG), National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), and Youth Free Expression Network (YFEN), a project of the Free Expression Policy Project (FEPP), are sponsoring the press conferences along with local school community members.