Supreme Court Overturns California Violent Video Game Law

[media-credit name=”Image Credit: Keep Anime Alive” align=”alignright” width=”300″][/media-credit]In a 7-2 ruling, the United States Supreme Court has ruled that a 2005 California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors is unconstitutional with Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan making up the majority opinion that games are free from further regulation based on First Amendment grounds.

The Court held that the law would have restricted the right to free speech without justifiable reasoning. “A legistlature cannot create new categories of unprotected speech simply by weighing the value of a particular category against its social costs and then punishing it if it fails the test,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the opinion for the majority.

“The State’s evidence is not compelling. California relies primarily on the research of Dr. Craig Anderson and a few other research psychologists whose studies purport to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children. These studies have been rejected by every court to consider them, and with good reason: They do not prove that violent video games causeminors to act aggressively (which would at least be a beginning). Instead, ‘[n]early all of the research is based on correlation, not evidence of causation, and most of the studies suffer from significant, admitted flaws in methodology.’”

“California also cannot show that the Act’s restrictions meet the alleged substantial need of parents who wish to restrict their children’s access to violent videos. The video-game industry’s voluntary rating system already accomplishes that to a large extent.”

In a move that further vindicated the current ratings program body, the court said that the Entertainment Software Review Board was enough protection. “As a means of assisting concerned parents it is seriously overinclusive because it abridges the First Amendment rights of young people whose parents think violent video games are a harmless pastime,” wrote Justice Scalia .

Justice Stephen Bryer dissented, saying that parents could still purchase the games for children if they wanted, similar to the existing ESRB system and thus did not offer enough protection to prevent minors from purchasing a violent video game:

“Applying traditional First Amendment analysis, I would uphold the statute as constitutional on its face and would consequently reject the industries’ facial challenge,” wrote Breyer. “California’s law imposes no more than a modest restriction on expression. The statute prevents no one from playing a video game, it prevents no adult from buying a video game, and it prevents no child or adolescent from obtaining a provided a parent is willing to help. All it prevents is a child or adolescent from buying, without a parent’s assistance, a gruesomely violent video game of a kind that the industry itself tells us it wants to keep out of the hands of those under the age of 17.”

Breyer continued, “The interest that California advances in support of the statute is compelling. Extremely violent games can harm children by rewarding them for being violently aggressive in play, and thereby often teaching them to be violently aggressive in life. And video games can cause more harm in this respect than typically passive media, such as books or films or television programs. I can find no ‘less restrictive’ alternative to California’s law that would be ‘at least as effective.’”

Breyer concluded his dissenting opinion with, “This case is ultimately less about censorship than it is about education. Our Constitution cannot succeed in securing the liberties it seeks to protect unless we can raise future generations committed cooperatively to making our system of government work.  Education, however, is about choices. Sometimes, children need to learn by making choices for themselves. Other times, choices are made for children – by their parents, by their teachers, and by the people acting democratically through their governments.  In my view, the First Amendment does not disable government from helping parents make such a choice here – a choice not to have their children buy extremely violent, interactive video games, which they more than reasonably fear pose only the risk of harm to those children. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.”

Justice Clarence Thomas went further and voted to uphold the law with the following opinion stating that the First Amendment does not apply to minors:

“The practices and beliefs of the founding generation establish that ‘the freedom of speech,’ as originally understood, does not include a right to speak to minors [or a right of minors to access speech] without going through the minors’ parents or guardians”

California State Senator Leland Yee, the lawmaker that initially drafted the law and signed by former Governor Schwartzenegger in 2005 has responded by stating to the Associated Press that his office will study the decision in order to reintroduce another version of the law that will pass the First Amendment test.