The Supreme Court says California cannot ban the rental or sale of violent video games to children.
The high court agreed Monday with a federal court’s decision to throw out California’s ban on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Sacramento said the law violated minors’ rights under the First and Fourteenth amendments.
The 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.
The court on a 7-2 vote said the law was unconstitutional.
More than 46 million American households have at least one video-game system, with the industry bringing in at least $18 billion in 2010.
(Source: ABC News)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
10 Responses
What exactly makes something ‘unconstitutional’, if you don’t like it?
What could we expect from this generation, it’s legal to buy as many assault weapons, it’s legal even for minors to buy/watch/play violent video games,
7-2 opinion, cutting accross traditional ideological lines.
The two dissenters were Justice Thomas (conservative) and Justice Breyer (liberal).
Akuperma, the liberals didn’t like the idea of a law for the sake of morality and the conservatives didn’t like the idea of a law.
This decision is absolutely ridiculous. Minors have no Constitutional right to buy violent games!
I agree. Minors are people and they have rights too. Now lets start selling them beer,wine and cigarettes. For good measure let them all drive. Lets finaly end discrimination once and for all.
I can see the First Amendment issue and don’t necessarily disagree with the Court on this (I haven’t read the full decision).
The real “issue” is the lack of parental involvement.
I don’t know if we, as a country, can legislate good parenting.
#5 & 6:
You miss the point. Completely.
How about reading the opinion before spouting your brilliance?
#8 Mr Brilliant 2pence. Do you mind sharing with us the relevant parts of the opinion you are refering to. Or are we just supposed to take your sage remarks as relevant because you spout them?
So you think anything with violence should be illegal so kids should not be able to read anything with violence (and then someone will want to even ban Tnach for it has violence) than there is violence sports foot ball act. Should there be a law banning it of course not it’s a parents issue not the courts parents should take responsibility you do not want the courts getting involved in our life’s for what will stop them for claiming that Milah is wrong or Shcita is cruel its best the stay out (besides the fact that I don’t believe that violence in games is bad depending on the age of the kid (10-11) I grow up playing cops and robbers with make believe guns and Burch Hashem we survived and did not become psycho Killers.