Kentucky Settles Internet Censorship Suit, Agrees to Lift Ban on Blogs
June 17, 2008
Public Citizen Client Was Blacklisted After Criticizing the Governor
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Commonwealth of Kentucky has settled a lawsuit with a political blogger whose critical comments of then-Gov. Ernie Fletcher resulted in the state “blacklisting” all blogs on state-owned computers.
Public Citizen’s client Mark Nickolas, author of the blog BluegrassReport.org, agreed Tuesday to dismiss the suit in the U.S. District Court in Frankfort, Ky. after Kentucky officials approved the settlement agreement. Louisville attorney Jennifer Moore also represented Nickolas.
Under the settlement, Kentucky officials agreed to no longer single out websites just because they are considered blogs. State officials reserve the right to block sites they consider inappropriate but agree to use a “viewpoint-neutral” standard that applies equally to all Web sites.
Public Citizen filed suit on behalf of Nickolas after the state started using a filtering program to censor all Web sites categorized as blogs. The state’s former top computer official stated in a court filing that the filtering policy was implemented because the governor’s office was unhappy with Nickolas’s blog, which was widely read by state employees and frequently criticized the governor.
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