SCOTUS To Rule on Violent Video Games
SCOTUSBlog reports:
The Supreme Court agreed Monday to rule on the constitutionality of a state law banning the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. The Court accepted for review an appeal by the state of California, urging the Court to adopt a new constitutional standard that would enable states to ban such games for those under age 18. The case is Schwarzenegger v. Video Software Dealers Association (08-1448).
The Court apparently had been holding the case until it decided another First Amendment case involving violent expression — U.S. v. Stevens (08-769). In that ruling, issued last Tuesday, the Court struck down a federal law that banned the depiction in videotapes of animal cruelty. In that ruling, the Justices refused to create a new exception to the First Amendment free speech right. The Court could have opted to send the California case back to the Ninth Circuit Court to weigh the impact of the Stevens decision. Instead, it simply granted review; the case will be heard and decided in the Court’s next Term, starting Oct. 4.
In the new appeal, California officials urged the Court to adopt a constitutional standard, created for use in cases involving protection of minors against obscene materials, that has never been used when the content was violent in nature, rather than obscene. The standard, derived from the Court’s 1968 decision in Ginsberg v. New York, allows states to pass laws barring minors’ access to obscene materials if the law represents a reasonable judgment by the legislature that exposure to such materials will harm minors.
