Community Corner

Court OKs Selling Violent Video Games to Kids

Kids in Ballwin and Ellisville have a First Amendment right to buy violent video games, no matter how gory or graphic, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that retailers and rental places cannot deny kids the right to buy violent video games, prompting mixed reactions from some parents in and around Ballwin.

In a decision that reversed a 2005 California law, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said access to violent video games is protected under the First Amendment, regardless of the consumer's age.

"No doubt a state possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm," Scalia said in the case's majority opinion. "But that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed."

Find out what's happening in Ballwin-Ellisvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

That reasoning didn't sit well with some parents, including Amy Grzesiowski of Ballwin.

Grzesiowski, who was at a GameStop near Ballwin on Monday with her 8-year-old son, Will, said she would have supported official regulation of what games minors can buy.

Find out what's happening in Ballwin-Ellisvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

"I definitely want control over that, but (my son) is young enough that I have to bring him to the store anyway," Grzesiowski said. "So they have some parent involvement there, but I would want there to be some kind of age restriction on the 'mature,' violent games."

GameStop and some other retailers bar the sale of Mature-rated games to minors as a company policy. GameStop's Senior Vice President of Stores Mike Dzura said his company supports Monday's decision.

"GameStop continues to believe that the video game industry's voluntary ratings system and our committed associates, not legislation, are the best ways to ensure age-appropriate video games make it into the hands of our younger customers,” Dzura said in an email.

Reasons for Disagreement

Justices Stephen Breyer and Clarence Thomas dissented from the majority ruling, arguing that the California law should have been upheld.

Breyer wrote that Monday's ruling created a division within the First Amendment since the Supreme Court has upheld bans forbidding the sale of pornography to minors.

"What sense does it make to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting the sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her?" Breyer said. "What kind of First Amendment would permit the government to protect children by restricting sales of that extremely violent video game only when the woman—bound, gagged, tortured and killed—is also topless?"

Thomas disagreed with the majority on the basis that other exceptions to free speech already exist when dealing with minors.

"The practices and beliefs of the founding generation establish that 'the freedom of speech,' as originally understood, does not include a right to speak to minors–or a right of minors to access speech–without going through the minors’ parents or guardians," Thomas said in his dissent.

Although the original California state law never took effect, it sought to stop the sale of any video games to children that depicted "killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being."

Although he ultimately concurred with the majority's decision, Justice Samuel Alito cited concerns about the ruling, in part because of the extreme nature of other video games, including some that aren't available at most or any walk-in retailers in the U.S. Among other titles, Alito alluded to the game "Manhunt 2," which involves the dismemberment of bodies and awards points to the player for how creatively and grotesquely he mutilates his murder victims. He also cited the PC game "Ethnic Cleansing," in which the player selects a specific minority group then proceeds to gun down members of that race. Another game cited in Alito's judgement footnotes was "RapeLay," where the objective is to rape a mother and her daughters.

"For all these reasons, I would hold only that the particular law at issue here fails to provide the clear notice that the Constitution requires," Alito said. "I would not squelch legislative efforts to deal with what is perceived by some to be a significant and developing social problem."

Looking Ahead

Alito said the court in the future may rule on an issue dealing with a broader scope regarding video game content and access if and when it reaches the Supreme Court.

Monday's case did not specifically address the sale of games rated Adults Only by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, for example, which typically are associated with pornography but sometimes apply to games with "prolonged scenes of intense violence." Few if any major U.S. retailers carry Adults Only-rated video games.

Scalia said the United States does not have a history of blocking children's access specifically to violence in other forms, citing several examples such as fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel, which concludes with the story's protagonists killing a witch by baking her in an oven.

Although lower courts concluded that video games were a unique exception partly because they're inherently "interactive," Scalia said media including books such as the Adventures of You have had interactive and sometimes violent elements for decades; similar to the Choose Your Own Adventure series, Adventures of You allow readers to change a story's plot by giving them options for what page to turn to.

"Certainly the books we give children to read—or read to them when they are younger—contain no shortage of gore," Scalia said.

A complete copy of Monday's ruling in the case, Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, is available here.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

More from Ballwin-Ellisville