State continues legal fight to protect children from excessively violent video games

SACRAMENTO – This week, the State of California officially filed the opening brief in their appeal of a lower courts decision granting a permanent injunction on the state’s violent video game law.  The 58-page brief filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit continues the State’s legal fight to protect children from excessively violent video games.

Despite the fact that for the first time a court recognized a state’s compelling interest to intercede in the video game industry, in August 2007 U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Whyte struck down the law authored by then Assemblyman and now Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo). 

“California’s violent video game law properly seeks to protect children from the harmful effects of interactive, ultra violent video games,” said Senator Yee.  “As stated in the appeal, our efforts to assist parents in the fight to keep these harmful video games out of the hands of children should survive Constitutional challenge under all levels of judicial review.”

“Based on an extensive body of peer-reviewed research from leading social scientists and medical associations, we narrowly tailored this law to serve the State’s compelling interest in protecting children,” said Yee, who is also a child psychologist.  “I am hopeful that the 9th Circuit will overturn the lower courts decision and help empower parents with the ultimate decision over whether or not their children play in a world of violence and murder.”

In 2005, the Legislature passed and the Governor signed into law Assembly Bill (AB) 1179 to prevent the sale and rental of violent video games that depict serious injury to human beings in a manner that is especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel, by persons who are under 18 years of age. Retailers who violated the act would be liable in an amount up to $1,000 for each violation.

The State’s opening brief to the Court of Appeals states, “It defies logic to suggest that our founding fathers intended to adopt a First Amendment that would guarantee children the right to purchase a video game wherein the player is rewarded for interactively causing the character to take out a shovel and bash the head of an image of a human being, appearing to beg for her life, until the head severs from the body and blood gushes from the neck. Or guarantee children the right to purchase a video game where the player can cause the character to wound an image of a human being with a rifle by shooting out a kneecap, pour gasoline on the wounded character, and then set the character on fire while the character appears to be alive and suffering.”

The brief continues, “Instead, the proper, more reasoned approach to First Amendment jurisprudence recognizes that the rights of minors are not coextensive with those of adults. States must be allowed to legislate to protect the health and welfare of children with certain universally recognized differences between adults and children in mind.”

The video game industry will file their response early next month and arguments will likely be heard before the Court of Appeals sometime next year.

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Contact: Adam J. Keigwin,
(916) 651-4008