High court tosses ban on video games

Siding with a pair of lower federal courts, the U.S. Supreme Court Monday struck down a California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors.

The vote was 7-2.

"Video games qualify for First Amendment protection," wrote Justice Antonin Scalia, for the majority. "Like protected books, plays and movies, they communicate ideas through familiar literary devices and features distinctive to the medium." California, on the other hand, "wishes to create a wholly new category of content-based regulation that is permissible only for speech directed at children. That is unprecedented and mistaken."

In enacting the 2005 measure, California lawmakers cited studies showing a link between minors who play the games and later violent activities.

That's possible. But is it our goal to ban or prevent all "violent activities"? Would that include football? Joining the Marines?

Arguing in favor of the law, lawyers for California attempted to link the statute to a landmark 1968 Supreme Court decision allowing for the regulation of obscene sexual material to children. Violent video games are "no less harmful to the development of minors," lawyer Zackery Morazzini said.

How far some of today's deviant pornography can stray from the way children used to learn about "the birds and the bees" is a topic for another day. What is certain is that mankind's earliest surviving legends -- so old they were ancient before they were ever written down -- the likes of "Beowulf" and "The Iliad" are soaked in violence, and there's no evidence the children were sent away from the hearth before such tales were told. For that matter, go back and read the original versions of some of Grimms' "fairy tales." It wasn't all Tinker Bell and fairy dust.

The court is correct about the First Amendment. If consumers -- which is to say, parents -- find some of these games inappropriate, it's their job to bar them from their households, or require their children to limit the time they spend with them.

For even if some of these "entertainments" go too far, once we allow the government prohibitionist's toe in the door, what will the Nanny State seek to ban, next?

"This is a historic and complete win for the First Amendment and the creative freedom of artists and storytellers everywhere," responded Michael D. Gallagher, CEO of the Entertainment Software Association. "It is time for elected officials to stop wasting time and public funds seeking unconstitutional restrictions on video games. Instead, we invite them to join with us to raise awareness and use of the highly effective tools that already exist to help that parents choose games suitable for their children."

Amen.