State fights to ban violent video game sales to kids
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Attorney General Jerry Brown said Wednesday they are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take a look at a lower court ruling that threw out the state's law banning the sale of violent video games to children.
Schwarzenegger signed SB 1179 into law in 2005. The act prohibited the sale or rental of violent video games to those under the age of 18. It also required violent games to be clearly labeled as such.
But the Video Software Dealers Association and Entertainment Software Association quickly filed a lawsuit challenging the law. A U.S. District Court decided in the associations' favor in 2007, on the grounds that the law violated First Amendment free speech rights. The governor appealed to the Ninth Circuit appeals court, but lost again last February.
"California's children are exposed everyday to video games that glamorize killing sprees, torture and sexual assault," Brown said in a press release. "In the face of this brutal and extreme violence, I am petitioning the Supreme Court to allow the state to enforce its reasonable ban on the sale or rental of violent video game sales to children."
Sean Bersell, vice president of the group formerly known as the Video Software Dealers Association and now called the Entertainment Merchants Association, responded that the state is wasting its money and its time.
"It boggles the mind that, on a day when the state of California finds itself in the worst fiscal crisis it has ever faced and is considering massive layoffs of teachers and cuts to public services, the state would choose to waste tens of thousands of dollars on pursuing this frivolous appeal," he said, noting that the law was found unconstitutional by two lower courts.