In a ringing endorsement of free speech and new technology, the U.S. Supreme Court this morning struck down a California law that restricts the sale or rental of violent video games to minors.
"Even where the protection of children is the object, the constitutional limits on governmental action apply," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion (PDF). The ruling was 7-2.
The Supreme Court's ruling unambiguously reaffirms that video games, which have become increasingly complex and in some cases more expensive to produce than movies, also qualify for full First Amendment protection.
Scalia noted that books often viewed as suitable for high school students are full of violent material. "Certainly the books we give children to read--or read to them when they are younger--contain no shortage of gore: Grimm's Fairy Tales, for example, are grim indeed. As her just deserts for trying to poison Snow White, the wicked queen is made to dance in red hot slippers 'till she fell dead on the floor, a sad example of envy and jealousy."
The Video Software Dealers Association, which subsequently changed its name to Entertainment Merchants Association, argued that the state is unreasonably trying to extend obscenity regulations--aimed at explicit pornography--to computer software.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer dissented from today's ruling. Thomas said the original view of the First Amendment at the time the Bill of Rights was enacted "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."
Breyer's dissent took a different approach. He wrote: "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 game provided a parent is willing to help."
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