In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the Supreme Court found a California law prohibiting sale or rental of “violent video games” to minors, violated the First Amendment. The decision can be found at http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-1448.ZS.html. 

            Because government generally has no power to restrict speech because of its message or subject matter, the Court noted under long-standing precedent the law could survive only if it was justified by a compelling government interest and was narrowly drawn to serve that interest. The law’s supporters acknowledged they not show a direct causal link between video games and harm to minors. Opponents, however, cited studies showing little or no causal link between video games and violence, and Department of Justice statistics showing steadily decreasing rates of violent juvenile crime during the “video game era.”

             The Court found any effects on minors were indistinguishable from effects from other media. For instance, the Court said, books available to children include Snow White, where, for trying to poison Snow White, the wicked queen is made to dance in red hot slippers “till she fell dead on the floor.” Cinderella’s evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves. Hansel and Gretel kill their captor by baking her in an oven.

             High-school reading lists, the Court found, are full of similar fare. Homer’s Odysseus blinds the Cyclops by grinding out his eye with a heated stake. In the Inferno, Dante and Virgil watch corrupt politicians struggle to stay submerged beneath a lake of boiling pitch, lest they be skewered by devils. Golding's Lord of the Flies recounts how a schoolboy is savagely murdered by other children.

             The Court said while playing violent video games is different from reading books, and reading classics is unquestionably more cultured and intellectually edifying, cultural and intellectual differences can not be the basis for restricting speech. Crude games, tawdry TV shows, and cheap novels and magazines are no less forms of speech than The Divine Comedy, and restrictions upon them must survive strict scrutiny. Personal disgust, the Court said, is not a valid basis for restricting expression.