State of California v. Video Games, 1st Amendment Trumps CA

First Amendment Trumps California in Supreme Court Battle Over Violent Video Games

Stephen Totilo 

Kotaku.com

5/27/11

The Supreme Court sided with the video game industry today, declaring a victor in the six-year legal match between the industry and the California lawmakers who wanted to make it a crime for anyone in the state to sell extremely violent games to kids.

In a 7-2 ruling Justice Antonin Scalia said the law does not comport with the First Amendment. He was joined by Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts, who had seemed sympathetic to California's concerns last year. Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer, traditionally members of the court's right and left wings, respectively, joined in dissent. [Read the full decision - PDF link.]

The case was The State of California vs. The Entertainment Merchants Association and the Entertainment Software Association. That last party, the ESA, is the gaming industry. The trade group puts on the annual E3 video game showcase, the gaming business' biggest news event each year. The ESA's lawyers argued against the state of California's on Election Day last year, trying to convince the court that video games deserve the same breadth of First Amendment protections as books and movies. The decision, revealed today, was the first time the Supreme Court has weighed in on video games in any fashion.

The law in question would have made it a crime to sell ultra-violent video games to minors in the State of California. It had been ruled un-Constitutional by lower courts.

"The basic principles of freedom of speech . . . do not vary' with a new and different communication medium," Scalia wrote in the Court's opinion, citing an earlier speech case.

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