Centennial, CO— 2/27/2019 — Last week a small group of parents calling themselves Pornography is Not Education (PINE) dropped their lawsuit against the Colorado Library Consortium (CLiC), a nonprofit organization that serves several hundred libraries, schools and academic institutions across the state. The complaint, filed with Arapahoe County District Court in October 2018, was the result of a two-year campaign by the parents to censor and remove a variety of educational research products from schools and libraries across Colorado.

The lawsuit claimed that CLiC knowingly brokers various forms of pornography, including sexually explicit materials in the form of graphic images, obscene text, advertising for sex toys, and active links to escort service web sites. The suit further claimed that CLiC markets such content to schools and libraries.

“Librarians occupy a crucial role as professional selectors and managers of content, from books to e-resources… not pornography,” said Jim Duncan, Executive Director for CLiC. “In today’s Information Age, we celebrate the services provided by these qualified and knowledgeable individuals working throughout Colorado’s libraries and schools. CLiC supports and helps libraries achieve greatness in our communities daily.”

Prior to the lawsuit, the parents threatened legal action against Cherry Creek School District, and they claimed victory for that district’s decision to remove vast amounts of educational material from its schools, including several thousand magazines, newspapers and other forms of electronic research resources. Local news coverage by Denver’s Channel 9News, highlighting the parents’ censorship success in pressuring the school district’s decision, rippled through other schools and districts served by CLiC.

EBSCO Information Services, also named in the lawsuit, is a leading provider of research databases, e-journals, magazine subscriptions, and e-books to libraries of all types across the country and internationally. PINE has dropped the lawsuit against EBSCO as well. Although not named in the lawsuit, other vendors of products licensed by libraries, such as Gale/Cengage, ProQuest, and OverDrive also have been cited by the parent group as delivering pornographic content to schools and libraries.

“Money and time spent on CLiC’s legal defense in this frivolous lawsuit could have been better used to support schools, libraries, and our communities,” Duncan said. “CLiC unifies libraries so that they deliver a valuable return on taxpayer investments… throughout our state’s many diverse regions, from rural to suburban to urban to mountain communities.”

“Parents, grandparents, community leaders and students — across Colorado — continue to trust librarians. They are right to value the services and rich resources offered by libraries and schools,” he said.

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Media contact:

Jim Duncan, Executive Director
720-739-3679
jduncan@clicweb.org