Yesterday the Supreme Court upheld an act of Congress requiring libraries to install filtering devices on computers that prevent users from accessing pornography sites, so long as the devices could be easily disabled by a librarian at the request of an adult.

In three sets of opinions, the splintered court held that forcing libraries to install anti-smut software does not violate the First Amendment rights of library patrons even though the filters also block out legitimate Web sites. The 6-3 ruling, which upholds a law passed three years ago, affects 119,000 libraries in the nation that receive federal funds, including many in the Bay Area.

....Library groups and patrons challenging the law protested that it also blocked out access to information on health, politics, gays and lesbians, and other legitimate Web sites.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that non-compliance with the law is punished by loss of federal funds. Libraries willing to forego federal funds don't have to install the devices.

Judith Krug, director of the Office of Intellectual Freedom for the American Library Association, predicted that many libraries might forgo federal funds rather than install the filters. Libraries -- including school libraries -- have received about $1 billion in federal funds in the last four years, about 1 percent of their total budget.

In San Francisco, Susan Hildreth, city librarian for the public library, said the library might give up the $240,000 it receives each year in federal funds, about half of the $430,000 the library budgets for telecommunications and Internet costs. Hildreth said that after Congress passed the filter law in 2000, San Francisco supervisors had adopted legislation that prohibits Internet filters being installed on computers used by adults or teenagers. "I don't believe our library commission or our Board of Supervisors would really be interested in the use of filters," she said.

What about poor communities that need the federal money?

"The impact of this will be much worse on poor communities rather than rich communities," said Christopher Hansen, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the Santa Cruz public library and several other libraries and patrons challenging the law.