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Supreme Court Sides with Video Games

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of video game manufacturers in an ongoing legal battle pitting the industry against California lawmakers who wanted to implement legislation concerning the games.

The State of California vs. The Entertainment Merchants Association and Entertainment Software Association involved lawmakers who sought to criminalize the sale of violent video games to minors, much like the laws governing pornography or the ratings system for movies. However, in the 7-2 decision, the court decided such laws violated First Amendment concerns.

“Video games qualify for First Amendment protection,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia. “Like protected books, plays, and movies, they communicate ideas through familiar literary devices and features distinctive to the medium. And ‘the basic principles of freedom of speech . . . do not vary’ with a new and different communication medium.”

The decision is considered notable in the larger discussion surrounding video games, such as what their role is in our culture, how they differ or are similar to other media, and whether further steps should be taken to regulate games with violent content. The Justices who expressed the majority opinion said they did not believe California claims that the games were harmful to children. They also deemed the current rating system of games sufficient to restrict children’s access to the violent and sexual content of some games.

One of the dissenting Justices, Clarence Thomas, based his opinion on the interpretation that children were not entitled to the same First Amendment protections as adults, thereby rendering the ban constitutional. However, Justice Stephen Breyer based his decision on what he saw as a double standard between sex and violence and the two’s differing standards of accessibility to minors.

“What sense does it make to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting a sale to that 13­ year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her?” Breyer asked. “What kind of First Amendment would permit the government to protect children by restricting sales of that extremely violent video game only when the woman-bound, gagged, tortured, and killed-is also topless?”