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As of today, the Supreme Court has deemed California Assembly Bill 1179 unconstitutional. The bill, signed into law by former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005, had been challenged before it could take effect and, in 2007, was struck down as unconstitutional a circuit court judge. An appeal last year upheld that judge’s decision, before the case went to the Supreme Court of the United States of America.  The stigma of violent content in video games stretches far back to the days of Mortal Kombat, when the medium’s right to produce content of a graphic nature was first called into question. Famous names such as Hillary Clinton and Joseph Lieberman have been attached to the cause of regulating violence and sexuality in video games and, more recently, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The case, Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (formerly Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association) was decided 7-2 in favor of the EMA. Justice Antonin Scalia penned the decision, stating that, “… A legislature cannot create new categories of unprotected speech simply by weighing the value of a particular category against its social costs and then punishing it if it fails the test.” The dissenting justices, Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer, cited the historically patriarchal framework of American society and the interactive nature of video games among their reasons for supporting the bill. |