June 27, 2011 in Nation/World

Supreme Court rejects ban on violent game sales

Associated Press

AP/Paul Sakuma photo

JT Taga-Anderson, 9, left, and Mika Taga-Anderson, 13, play Grand Theft Auto IV in Los Altos, Calif. The Supreme Court today ruled that California cannot ban the rental or sale of violent video games to children.
(Full-size photo)

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court today refused to let California regulate the sale or rental of violent video games to children, saying governments do not have the power to “restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed” despite complaints about graphic violence.

On a 7-2 vote, the high court upheld a federal appeals court decision to throw out the state’s ban on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Sacramento had ruled that the law violated minors’ rights under the First Amendment, and the high court agreed.

“No doubt a state possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm,” said Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion. “But that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.”

The California law would have prohibited the sale or rental of violent games to anyone under 18. Retailers who violated the act would have been fined up to $1,000 for each infraction.

More than 46 million American households have at least one video-game system, with the industry bringing in at least $18 billion in 2010.

Unlike depictions of “sexual conduct,” Scalia said there is no tradition in the United States of restricting children’s access to depictions of violence, pointing out the violence in the original depiction of many popular children’s fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella and Snow White.

Hansel and Gretel kill their captor by baking her in an oven, Cinderella’s evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves and the evil queen in Snow White is forced to wear red hot slippers and dance until she is dead, Scalia said.

“Certainly the books we give children to read — or read to them when they are younger — contain no shortage of gore,” Scalia added.

But Justice Clarence Thomas, who dissented from the decision along with Justice Stephen Breyer, said the majority read something into the First Amendment that isn’t there.

“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,” Thomas wrote.

25 comments on this story so far. Add yours!

SpokaneLiberal on June 27 at 8:39 a.m.
Breyer and Thomas agreed???? on a dissent from the other 7?? Weird.
valleyman on June 27 at 9:10 a.m.
The argument Thomas has is an interesting one. Makes you wonder how large the free speech right is for those under the age of legal majority now as it has always been curtailed to some degree or another… Just goes to show not all court disagreements are purely left or right…
eagleproducer on June 27 at 10:01 a.m.
From the ruling: “saying governments do not have the power to “restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed”
What about pornographic websites? What about online gambling? What about a parent telling a kid you can’t subscribe to a certain magazine? What about the MPAA and their rating system that keeps minors away from films that contain the same type of content as included in these games.
What a bizarro world we live in where renting or buying a video game is “protected speech.”
eagleproducer on June 27 at 10:02 a.m.
spokelib: Thomas also hasn’t asked a single question during this session. He’s on like a ten year streak.
gmorton on June 27 at 10:29 a.m.
eagleproducer wrote,
“What about a parent telling a kid you can’t subscribe to a certain magazine? What about the MPAA and their rating system that keeps minors away from films that contain the same type of content as included in these games.”
Eagle – do you know the difference between government (“governments do not have the power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed”) and parents and theater owners?
I hope you are not teaching kids anything to do with history, government, or constitutional law.
“What a bizarro world we live in where renting or buying a video game is ‘protected speech.’”
Really? What else what would you grant gummint the power to ban – movies? Plays? Art exhibits? Broadcasts of baseball games? Anything lefties don’t like?
Diana on June 27 at 10:36 a.m.
“I hope you are not teaching kids anything to do with history, government, or constitutional law.”
I hope the Supreme Court isn’t.
Has the Roberts Court issued one single ruling that served to level the field or provide equal justice under the law? Every decision I recall has been in favor of the corporations and monied interests, and made it harder for the average citizen to redress wrongs.
Activist Justices were supposed to be abhorrent to the Right, but that only seems to hold true if the vote goes against you.
SpokaneLiberal on June 27 at 10:41 a.m.
I know Thomas doesn’t ask questions. I don’t know why he thinks it is appropriate to not try and clarify or probe anything on any case.
The thing that is crazy to me is Scalia sided with Ginsburg. But Scalia split with Thomas, yet Breyer and Thomas agree, yet Ginsburg and Breyer are on opposite sides. It is just a weird alignment of Justices. I get it when Kennedy sides with either side. I get it when a liberal justice and a conservative justice land on the same side in a unanimous or nearly unanimous opinion. I even get when they land on the same side with concurring opinions that offer different rationale. But to have Ginsburg concur in full with Scalia and Thomas dissent with the backing of Breyer is just bizzaro world.
detroitdude on June 27 at 10:46 a.m.
Whether it’s movies or video games, parents have to shoulder responsibility as to what they allow their children to watch or play. A rating system for movies and video games are a good guideline. In the end it is up to parents being involved and saying yay or nay.
The rating system itself is subjective anyways. You are not going to want to have a 12 year old watch “Showgirls”, but you may in fact find there is relevant meaning in having your kid watch “Schindler’s List” for example.
As for the video games, I think this even having to be decided by the courts is a waste of money. There is no correlation that playing violent video games makes people commit violent acts in real life. If that was true, and there was some sort of correlation, we would have millions upon millions of murderers on the streets and it would be anarchy. The majority of people and kids even, can play a video game for exactly what it is, a game.
catfuzz on June 27 at 10:47 a.m.
Children do not have Constitutional rights. They are not responsible citizens yet. My own children certainly do not have freedom of speech. They are CHILDREN. They must be supervised because they don’t usually make proper decisions for themselves. With so many parents leaving their kids home all day because both have to work, we need this ban in place so kids don’t go buy and rent games they shouldn’t have.
jddavis on June 27 at 11:32 a.m.
Agree with the decision and DetroitDude’s comment. Parenting is not the duty of the government.
gmorton on June 27 at 11:56 a.m.
Diana wrote,
“Has the Roberts Court issued one single ruling that served to level the field or provide equal justice under the law?”
As to the first point, I hope not. It is not the job of the courts, or the government generally, to “level the field.”
The ruling does assure equal justice, though – it affirms that video game authors and publishers have the same rights of free speech as labor unions, Greenpeace, and moms in tennis shoes.
gmorton on June 27 at 12:00 p.m.
catfuzz wrote,
“My own children certainly do not have freedom of speech. They are CHILDREN. They must be supervised because they don’t usually make proper decisions for themselves.”
That’s true. Supervising them, however, is *your* responsibility, not the responsibility of a game publisher, video store owner, or the gummint.
Ed Byrnes on June 27 at 12:30 p.m.
What games my sons play is my responsibility as a parent.
I execute my responsibility in two ways:
1. I directly restrict some games from them;
2. I remain engaged with them and instill honesty, self-respect and respect for others in them so that they refrain, at least so far, from purchasing or renting items that either their mother or I disapprove of.
Their mother and I are divorced and have been for some time, yet we communicate clearly and directly support each other on such matters. It is our responsibility to be as effective as we can be as co-parents, regardless of our shared personal history.
This all boils down, in my respectfully submitted opinion, to those of us who are parents taking our responsibilities seriously.
Ed
valleyman on June 27 at 12:47 p.m.
Diana,
Thank you for illustrating perfectly what is so wrong with the viewpoint those in your camp harbor… Courts are not supposed to “level the playing field or provide equal justice under the law.” They are supposed to be impartial arbiters of fact and law. Impartiality means there will always be winners and losers. I pray you can understand this, but I won’t hold my breath. This has been the fundamental disagreement in understanding and interpreting the role of the court for at least 100 years if not arguably longer.
valleyman on June 27 at 12:50 p.m.
Ed,
My hat is off to you sir. Thank you for taking the oft-neglected parental role of being responsible for your children. Thank you for making decisions for their betterment and not expecting the state to do it for you. And thank you for co-parenting even in a split-family situation.
We need more people like you and less that think the state is a better parent than you can be.
greenlibertarian on June 27 at 1:10 p.m.
I was in similar stead with Ed. My daughter’s mother, my ex, and I agreed our daughter would not be allowed to play video games. She complained little, as we provided numerous other activities in which to engage her, much of it involving reading and talking about what we read together or separately. As well as a great deal of physical activities, in which she engaged in some 3 hours a day, on average. Not having a sibling, we made sure she interacted with lots of folks both older and younger, and she mentored and student-taught lots of very impressionable girls in their pre-teen and early teen years.
Music and volunteering in the service of others was also a major part of our education plan. She also had plenty of unstructured time to do with what she wanted, with the exception of banned activities like video games.
She graduated with highest honors from GPrep last year, and has a 4.0 GPA at GU this past year with a goal of going to law school after that. I would love to see her become a judge some day.
It takes some work but it is quite fun, and the luck of the draw (and hormones raging in those teen years) can still thwart the best intentions and practices, we are thankful we had such good luck.
greenlibertarian on June 27 at 1:23 p.m.
Uncle Thomas has other problems going on:
(precedes) The project throws a spotlight on an unusual, and ethically sensitive, friendship that appears to be markedly different from those of other justices on the nation’s highest court.
The two men met in the mid-1990s, a few years after Justice Thomas joined the court. Since then, Mr. Crow has done many favors for the justice and his wife, Virginia, helping finance a Savannah library project dedicated to Justice Thomas, presenting him with a Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass and reportedly providing $500,000 for Ms. Thomas to start a Tea Party-related group. They have also spent time together at gatherings of prominent Republicans and businesspeople at Mr. Crow’s Adirondacks estate and his camp in East Texas.
In several instances, news reports of Mr. Crow’s largess provoked controversy and questions, adding fuel to a rising debate about Supreme Court ethics. But Mr. Crow’s financing of the museum, his largest such act of generosity, previously unreported, raises the sharpest questions yet — both about Justice Thomas’s extrajudicial activities and about the extent to which the justices should remain exempt from the code of conduct for federal judges.
Although the Supreme Court is not bound by the code, justices have said they adhere to it. Legal ethicists differed on whether Justice Thomas’s dealings with Mr. Crow pose a problem under the code. But they agreed that one facet of the relationship was both unusual and important in weighing any ethical implications: Justice Thomas’s role in Mr. Crow’s donation for the museum.
The code says judges “should not personally participate” in raising money for charitable endeavors, out of concern that donors might feel pressured to give or entitled to favorable treatment from the judge. In addition, judges are not even supposed to know who donates to projects honoring them. (continues)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/us/politics/19thomas.html
gmorton on June 27 at 3:46 p.m.
The Court handed down another ruling today – one more important than the video game decision, which the S-R so far has not covered: it struck down Arizona’s “Clean Election Law” as a violation of the First Amendment.
The law allowed candidates for political office who declined to accept more than a nominal amount of private financing to receive matching funds from the State equal to the amount an opponent raised privately, and to also receive matching funds for any advertising sponsored by independent groups which supported an opponent.
The case was litigated by the Institute for Justice, the libertarian counterpart to the ACLU.
http://www.ij.org/about/3872
gmorton on June 27 at 3:57 p.m.
greenlibertarian wrote,
“The project throws a spotlight on an unusual, and ethically sensitive, friendship that appears to be markedly different from those of other justices on the nation’s highest court.”
Heh. Yes. The NYT is trying to manufacture a scandal. There is nothing illegal or unethical in a judge having wealthy friends, or in those wealthy friends donating money to charitable causes in which they both have an interest.
Don’t expect anything to come of this non-issue.
greenlibertarian on June 27 at 5:04 p.m.
We’ll see, gmorton. These are new revelations of significant value and which were first kept secret, not unlike Thomas’s failure to note, as required, his wife’s income from Heritage for five years.
Wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Judicial Watch sac’d up and got involved.
Abe Fortas went down, hard, for similar behavior.
gmorton on June 27 at 5:23 p.m.
greenlibertarian wrote,
“Abe Fortas went down, hard, for similar behavior.”
C’mon, green. Fortas had accepted, while a member of the Court, a $20,000 annual retainer from a financier under investigation for securities violations (and later indicted). Fortas also intervened to secure a pardon for his client from LBJ.
There is no parallel whatsoever to the Thomas matter.
eagleproducer on June 27 at 7:42 p.m.
Minors don’t have free speech rights, at least that’s what the Supreme Court said a few years back when ruling against a student’s T-shirt.
When I read the discussion/debate from the founders concerning the first amendment, it seems their preoccupation was with freedom of political speech and it’s furtherance for the causes of the republic. Now it’s corporations are persons and minors have free speech.
The Arizona ruling was predictable and another blow to the dwindling remnants of democracy in the U.S.
eagleproducer on June 27 at 7:45 p.m.
I’m almost floored. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen the ACLU and the Institute for Justice used in the same sentence. There it just happened again!
Bagger, please…
gmorton on June 27 at 8:16 p.m.
eagleproducer wrote,
“Minors don’t have free speech rights, at least that’s what the Supreme Court said a few years back when ruling against a student’s T-shirt.”
The free speech rights of minors was not the issue. It was the free speech rights of the the authors, publishers, and distributors of video games which the law infringed.
Ed Byrnes on June 27 at 8:51 p.m.
greenlibertarian,
I concur with you about parenting, and in our situations co-parenting. You stated “It takes some work but it is quite fun” which are the simultaneous truths of parenting. Congratulations on your daughter’s ongoing achievements.
The hormonal imbalances are just beginning in our home, with what will eventually be two cases of testosterone poisoning, though I hope the year round physical activities keep this in reasonable check.
I completely agree about interactions with people of many ages, and scouting is a great structure for volunteering, I also volunteer in scouting.
valleyman thank you for your supportive statements.
Ed