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The Supreme Court of the United States has agreed Monday, August 26, 2010 to decide whether California can ban the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco decided on December 21, 2005 that the law violated minors' constitutional rights under the First and Fourteenth amendments.
The law, if allowed to go in to affect, would have prohibited the sale or rental of violent video games to anyone under 18. It also would have created labeling requirements for video game manufacturers and any retailers who violated the law would have been fined up to $1,000 for each violation.
”Violent videogame” is defined in the law as a videogame in which a player has the ability to “virtually inflict” pain and suffering on other characters or creatures in a variety of ways, including to kill, maim, dismember, or sexually assault an image of a human bring, in a manner that is deviant or morbid, patently offensive, or lacks serious artistic, political or scientific value for minors. The law's definition attempts to catch those games considered gratuitously violent, or “heinous, cruel and depraved,” in that it permits players to engage in violence “beyond what is necessary to commit a killing.”
The law never took affect as it was challenged in court soon after Governor Schwarzenegger signed the bill. The Video Software Dealers Association (the “VSDA”) challenged the constitutionality of the law on the grounds that it violates First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, and U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte granted a permanent injunction, finding that the VSDA would be likely to succeed in a similar constitutional challenge of the law, as they would be making the same arguments as in these successful cases that there is no certain causal link between violent videogames and violent behaviour and that the law isn't narrowly tailored to ensure any restrictions on speech that occur to prevent the harms presented by violent videogames were only those necessary to achieve the objectives of the law.
The original case is available here.
Video Software Dealers Association v. Schwarzenegger
December 21, 2005 US Dist. Ct., ND Cal.
401 F. Supp. 2d 1034
On May 20, 2009, the state of California requested that the U.S. Supreme Court review the Ninth Circuit's decision
On February 20, 2009, the appellate court issued a ruling that affirmed the lower court decision that the law is unconstitutional.The video game industry also argued that approval of California's video game restrictions could open the door for states to limit minors' access to other material under the guise of protecting children. ''The state, in essence, asks us to create a new category of nonprotected material based on its depiction of violence,'' Judge Callahan of the 9th Circuit Appelate court wrote in the 30-page ruling.
The court will hear arguments in this case in the fall.
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