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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Law - Kentucky state government changes policy on blogs

From the Lexington Herald-Leader, a brief report today:

A political blogger whose Web site was blocked on state government computers by former Gov. Ernie Fletcher's administration has settled his First Amendment lawsuit against the state. Mark Nickolas, who operated the blog BluegrassReport. org, has agreed to drop his federal lawsuit against the state. State government is agreeing in the settlement, among other things, to block access to blogs based only on a "viewpoint neutral standard" that's equally applied. The Fletcher administration blocked state employees from having access to political blogs after Nickolas criticized the former governor.
[More] It turns out the Joseph Gerth of the Louisville Courier Journal has a more extensive story this morning, including the following:
The state has paid $10,000 to settle a lawsuit filed after the administration of former Gov. Ernie Fletcher blocked access to blogs on state computers.

The state also agreed to treat blogs as it does other news sources, including newspapers and Internet sites operated by television stations.

That restates a policy put in place in March by Gov. Steve Beshear.

"In the future, blogs can't be blocked just because they are blogs," said Greg Beck, staff attorney for the non-profit group Public Citizen, which filed the suit on behalf of blogger Mark Nickolas.

The Fletcher administration began blocking blogs -- along with Internet sites operated by hate groups, pornographers and casinos -- two years ago this month. The administration said that it didn't want state workers reading the blogs on state time. * * *

Jeff Mosley, general counsel for the Finance and Administration Cabinet, said the language agreed to in settling the suit is consistent with the policy under Beshear.

Mosley said that the state didn't acknowledge violating any laws when it blocked the Web sites and that the $10,000 it agreed to pay Public Citizen was "a nuisance value. … We were spending a lot of time dealing with it, and for a lot of reasons it just made sense to settle it."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 18, 2008 08:20 AM
Posted to General Law Related