Brown vs. Entertainment Merchants Assn.
Background
The California Law
In 2005, the California State Legislature passed AB 1179, sponsored by California State Senator Leland Yee. The law prohibited the sale or rental of violent video games to children under the age of 18. Retailers who violated the statute would have been fined up to $1,000. The language of the law meant to mirror the Miller Test (possibly add internal link to page here).Violent video games are defined as those games in which "the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being." The bill was signed into law by Gov. Schwarzenegger in October 2005.The law would have gone into effect in January 2006.
Legal Challenges
District Court Opinion
California's Appeal
Ninth Circuit Appeal
Supreme Court Review
Governor Schwarzenegger again appealed to the Supreme Court, looking to overturn the Ninth Circuit's ruling, filing a writ of certiorari to the Court in May 2009. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
Decision
The case was decided on June 27, 2011. The Supreme Court ruled California statute was unconstitutional and that video games are allowed the same protection under the first amendment as books, plays, and movies.
- Video games qualify for first amendment protection
- This law would be creating a new category of unprotected speech, which would unjustly “weigh the value of a particular category against its social costs and then punishing it if it fails the test.”
- This assertion is based on United States v. Stevens, 559 U. S.
- Unlike the New York law upheld in Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U. S. 629, California’s Act does not adjust the boundaries of an existing category of unprotected speech to ensure that a definition designed for adults is not uncritically applied to children.
- Instead, the State wishes to create a wholly new category of content-based regulation that is permissible only for speech directed at children. That is unprecedented and mistaken.
- Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively
- Any demonstrated effects are both small and indistinguishable from effects produced by other media. Since California has declined to restrict those other media, e.g., Saturday morning cartoons.
- 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. Moreover, as a means of assisting parents the Act is greatly over inclusive, since not all of the children who are prohibited from purchasing violent video games have parents who disapprove of their doing so. The Act cannot satisfy strict scrutiny.