Video games qualify for First Amendment protection. Like protected books, plays, and movies, they communicate ideas through familiar literary devices and features distinctive to the medium. And “the basic principles of freedom of speech . . . do not vary” with a new and different communication medium.Today, the US Supreme Court ruled in a 7-2 vote that California's law against selling or renting violent video games to minors is unconstitutional. I'm personally glad to see this decisive blow to the bipartisan Nanny State proponents who think that government, rather than parents or the entertainment industry itself, should restrict what material children are allowed to access.
This article about the ruling from Fox Business touches on an important point made by Justice Scalia:
"Certainly the books we give children to read--or read to them when they are younger--contain no shortage of gore," Scalia said. "Cinderella's evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves. And Hansel and Gretel (children!) kill their captor by baking her in an oven."I personally find it interesting that they didn't mention another particular book containing no shortage of gore that our society values giving to children, in which people are mauled by bears, castrated, stoned to death, and crucified...
