BROWN v. ENTERTAINMENT MERCHANTS ASSOCIATION

Legal Principle at Issue

Does the First Amendment bar a state from restricting the sale of violent video games to minors?

Action

Affirmed (includes modified). Petitioning party did not receive a favorable disposition.

Facts/Syllabus

California Assembly Bill 1179 (2005) prohibits the sale or rental of “violent video games” to minors, and requires their packaging to be labeled “18.” The Act covers games “in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being, if those acts are depicted” in a manner that a “reasonable person, considering the game as a whole, would find appeals to a deviant or morbid interest of minors,” that is “patently offensive to prevailing standards in the community as to what is suitable for minors,” and that “causes the game, as a whole, to lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.” Violation of the Act is punishable by a civil fine of up to $1,000.

Respondents, representing the video-game and software industries, filed a pre-enforcement challenge to the Act in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. That court concluded in Video Software Dealers Association v. Schwarzenegger (2007) that the Act violated the First Amendment and permanently enjoined its enforcement. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed in 2009, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari in 2010.