It used to be lobbyists, advocates, and members of the public couldn’t use laptops while observing the Vermont Senate from the public galleries. That’s changed.

The Senate Rules Committee has abandoned a rule it put in place in 2008 that forbad the use of electronic equipment in the Senate chamber by anyone other than news media and Senate staff.

The change came after the ACLU complained that the rule unfairly discriminated and was embarrassingly inconsistent with the state’s public embrace of e-technologies.

The 2008 rule codified a practice that had grown under the Senate’s presiding officer, Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie. As early as 2005 non-journalists were told to leave the chamber if they wanted to use their laptop, even to look up bills or the day’s Senate calendar.

The ACLU told the Senate Rules Committee that computers have become as necessary to daily work as pen and paper were 100 years ago.

Laptops are quiet, their use is not intrusive, and they provide the means of taking accurate notes of the Senate’s proceedings, we noted.

We salute the Senate Rules Committee for lifting the ban.